Amazon, the global e-commerce and technology giant, recently announced it will lay off approximately 14,000 employees. This decision has not only attracted widespread attention within the industry but also further revealed the profound structural adjustments the global technology sector is undergoing under the impact of the artificial intelligence (AI) wave. As the second-largest private employer in the United States, Amazon’s large-scale layoffs are not an isolated incident but a microcosm of the industry’s overall shift towards intelligent and efficient operations.
Beth Galetti, Amazon’s Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology, emphasized in an internal memo that artificial intelligence is “the most transformative technology since the birth of the internet,” capable of significantly accelerating corporate innovation. This statement reflects the consensus among technology companies on the strategic value of AI technology. With the maturation of technologies such as generative AI, large language models, and automated systems, companies are becoming less reliant on human labor in various areas, including customer service, supply chain management, data analysis, and even content creation. Amazon’s layoffs are precisely aimed at freeing up resources from traditional positions and reinvesting them in more strategically important areas such as AI research and development, machine learning, and cloud computing services.
It’s noteworthy that despite Amazon achieving net sales of $167.7 billion in the second quarter of this year, a 13% year-on-year increase, the company persisted with its layoff plan. Galetti acknowledged that layoffs against a backdrop of strong performance might raise questions, but she emphasized that it was a necessary measure to cope with a “rapidly changing world.” This contradiction precisely reveals the common predicament of the current tech industry: even during periods of strong economic performance, companies still have to pay a short-term price for long-term technological transformation.
In fact, since 2022, Amazon has laid off more than 27,000 employees. Behind this number is a new round of “efficiency optimization” in the global tech industry after the pandemic. Not only Amazon, but also many other tech giants, including Microsoft, Google, and Meta, have previously launched multiple rounds of layoffs, all targeting “organizational flattening” and “AI-first” strategies. Industry analysts point out that this signifies that tech companies are shifting from a phase of scale expansion to a phase driven by quality improvement and technological innovation.
Meanwhile, the labor market structure is also undergoing profound changes. In June of this year, Amazon CEO Andy Garcetti pointed out that as AI technology is rapidly being implemented, the company’s demand for some traditional positions is decreasing, while the demand for emerging positions such as AI engineers, data scientists, and machine learning experts is continuously increasing. This latest technological trend is not limited to technology companies but is also spreading to industries such as finance, manufacturing, and retail. The rise of generative AI is reshaping the global employment landscape and posing new requirements for the skill structure of the workforce.
However, the growing pains of this transformation cannot be ignored. Amazon has more than 1.54 million employees worldwide, the majority of whom are warehouse and logistics workers. Although the recent layoffs mainly affect company employees (approximately 350,000), with the promotion of technologies such as automated warehouses, robotic sorting, and drone delivery, entry-level positions also face the long-term risk of replacement. How to balance employee placement and social responsibility while promoting technological upgrades has become a challenge that all technology companies must face.
Looking ahead, Amazon plans to continue to flatten its organizational structure until 2026 and expand recruitment in key strategic areas. It is foreseeable that, against the backdrop of the continuous maturation of AI technology, the employment structure of the technology industry will further shift towards “high-skill, high-value-added” positions. Businesses, governments, and educational institutions urgently need to strengthen collaboration to promote workforce retraining and skills upgrading to cope with this technology-driven industrial revolution.
Amazon’s layoff plan is not only a strategic adjustment by the company itself, but also a landmark moment for the entire technology industry as it moves towards the AI era. In today’s rapidly accelerating global digital transformation, how to achieve a win-win situation for businesses, employees, and society in this technological wave will become a core issue in global industrial policy and business strategy in the coming years.
