Amazon cuts 16,000 jobs in historic wave of layoffs

Amazon is laying off thousands of corporate employees, mirroring broad cuts the company made to its workforce in October as it continues its anti-bureaucracy push.

Amazon’s head of resources Beth Galetti told employees in a memo Wednesday that the company was cutting 16,000 roles amid further corporate restructuring.

Reached on Wednesday, Amazon officials said the layoffs are all “corporate employees” and they were not providing a state-by-state breakdown of where those cuts are based.

Amazon currently operates a massive West Plains fulfillment center, called GEG1, near Spokane International Airport. That facility, at 10010 W. Geiger Blvd., employs several hundred workers.

After it opened in 2020, Amazon confirmed a year later that it would open a 1.3 million-square-foot facility in Spokane Valley.

That fulfillment center, at 18007 E. Garland Ave., cycles through orders for bulk cleaning supplies, paper goods, patio furniture, pet food and outdoor sports equipment.

As of fall 2025, the company had about 5,000 full-time and part-time workers at both facilities. That puts the e-commerce giant among the largest employers in the Spokane region.

Echoing her statements from October, when the company laid off 14,000 employees, Amazon’s Galetti in a statement that reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy” were driving the cuts.

“While we’re making these changes, we’ll also continue hiring and investing in strategic areas and functions that are critical to our future.” Galetti wrote. “We’re still in the early stages of building every one of our businesses and there’s significant opportunity ahead.”

Amazon is laying off employees as it funnels billions of dollars into artificial intelligence spending, mostly toward new data centers and advanced computer chips. The company, along with its fellow tech titans, has significantly boosted quarterly capital expenditures as it competes in the AI race. Amazon was projected to spend more than $100 billion in capital expenditures last year.

Wednesday’s layoffs, combined with October’s, represent the largest workforce reductions in company history. The company previously laid off 27,000 employees between late 2022 and early 2023.

Amazon is the second-largest employer in the world among private companies, with a workforce of about 1.57 million people. Most work in the company’s warehouses.

The layoffs will affect a smaller slice of Amazon’s total head count, as about 350,000 employees work in its corporate offices. In the Puget Sound area, the company has about 67,000 corporate employees between its Seattle, Bellevue and Redmond offices.

As Amazon leadership continues to reshape the company, Galetti was noncommittal about future cuts, though she said the company is not planning more mass layoffs.

“Some of you might ask if this is the beginning of a new rhythm – where we announce broad reductions every few months,” Galetti said. “That’s not our plan.”

But every team will continue to evaluate operations and “make adjustments as appropriate, Galetti said.

Amazon has a recent example of those adjustments, where individual teams have trimmed their head count. The company let go of 84 employees based in Seattle and Bellevue in December, unrelated to October’s layoffs.

Amazon’s layoffs occurred a week before the company is set to report financial results for 2025. Wall Street expects revenue for the final three months of 2025, which includes the holiday shopping season, to come in at more than $211 billion with more than $21 billion in profit.

Amazon’s revenue for the first nine months of 2025 was $503 billion, according to its most recent earnings report from October. Total profit for those nine months was $56.5 billion, up from $39.2 billion reported over the same period in 2024.

Wednesday’s announcement wasn’t a surprise. Galetti had said in October that cuts could continue into 2026 and not long after, rumors swirled at the company. Reuters reported last week that Amazon was planning layoffs.

Amazon appeared to have nonetheless bungled the announcement, according to media reports. An email was sent prematurely on Tuesday that referenced Galetti’s memo, which had not been published yet.

The company’s evolving plans this week included a shift in its physical retail strategy. Amazon announced Tuesday it was shutting down all Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go grocery stores to prioritize its subsidiary Whole Foods and grocery delivery.

Spokesman-Review reporter Thomas Clouse contributed to this report.