Amazon may lay off 15% of HR roles, others in fresh round of job cuts

Amazon's human resources division, known as PXT or the People eXperience Technology team, which has over 10,000 staff globally, will be impacted the most, along with other core consumer businesses

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E-commerce giant Amazon is preparing to slash as much as 15 per cent of its human resources staff, with additional layoffs likely in other departments, Fortune reported.

 

Citing sources, the report said that Amazon's human resources division, internally known as PXT or the People experience Technology team, which has over 10,000 staff globally, will be impacted the most, along with other core consumer businesses.

 

However, the exact number of job cuts and the timing of these cuts have not been disclosed.

 

Reason behind Amazon's job cuts?

 

These job cuts come at a time as the tech giant looks to reduce its employee costs as it invests aggressively in artificial intelligence products and infrastructure, both for using it internally and to sell to enterprise customers. Amazon also plans to incur capital expenditure of over $100 billion as it builds on its cloud and artificial intelligence data centers.

 

Amazon announces plan to hire 250,000 workers during the holiday season

 

The latest development comes as Amazon recently announced its plan to hire 250,000 workers for the upcoming holiday season across its US fulfillment and transportation networks, Reuters reported.

 

The announcement was made as the e-commerce giant expects a huge surge in orders and is preparing ahead of it. However, concerns were raised over US shoppers being cautious about spending in this holiday season, as they brace for the impact of US President Donald Trump's tariff policies.

 

Recent layoffs at Amazon

 

While the potential job cuts are significant, the company has been seeing smaller rounds of layoffs for the last few months. According to a Bloomberg report, nearly 110 roles were recently slashed in Amazon's Wondery podcast division, which was shut down as part of the broader restructuring plan.

 

In July this year, the tech giant also laid off several hundred employees from its Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing division. In May, 100 jobs were also cut from its devices and services unit.

 

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy highlights AI's role

 

CEO Andy Jassy has already overseen the largest layoffs in the company's history from late 2022 into 2023, when it slashed 27,000 corporate jobs, which accounted for a high single-digit percentage of the company’s office jobs. Jassy has been vocal about the role of artificial intelligence in reshaping the company.

 

In June, he informed Amazon's staff to welcome the new artificial intelligence-powered era. He said, "Those who embrace this change, become conversant in AI, help us build and improve our AI capabilities internally and deliver for customers, will be well-positioned to have high impact and help us reinvent the company."

 

Jassy also acknowledged that the company’s increased use of artificial intelligence would lead to job reductions, saying, "We expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company."

 

Layoffs surged in 2025

 

According to a report in The Economic Times, Meta and Microsoft also laid off employees this year, along with Amazon. As many as 150,000 job cuts were reported in February and March alone this year.

 

Companies like Oracle, CNN, Dropbox, and Block have all previously announced layoffs linked to artificial intelligence.

 

List of firms announcing layoffs in 2025

 

Block: Jack Dorsey's fintech firm was said to cut 1,000 jobs

 

Oracle: The US cloud services giant recently slashed its 254 employees in the San Francisco Bay Area, and another 101 were let go in Seattle.

 

Salesforce: Salesforce slashed 4,000 jobs from its customer support workforce as it doubles down on artificial intelligence.

 

Intel: In July, chipmaker Intel announced plans to lay off 5,500 employees across multiple US states.

 

Scale AI: In July this year, Scale AI slashed 200 full-time employees and 500 contractors.

 

Crowdstrike: Cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike announced plans to cut 500 positions, roughly five per cent of its workforce.

 

Meta: Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announced in February that it would lay off over 3,000 employees in a new round of job cuts, primarily targeting staff with low performance ratings

 

Microsoft: Throughout 2025, Microsoft has implemented several rounds of layoffs, resulting in the dismissal of more than 15,000 employees over the year. In May, the company announced plans to cut an additional 6,000 positions as part of its ongoing workforce reduction.

 

Google: Google has carried out several rounds of layoffs and voluntary separation programmes as part of its restructuring towards AI-driven growth, affecting employees in its Search, Ads, Engineering, Marketing, and Research units.