Just as Amazon’s founder and current executive chairman Jeff Bezos reclaimed his spot as the third richest man in the world, the company announced a new round of layoffs impacting 16,000 employees.
“I want to let you know that we’re making additional organizational changes across Amazon that will impact some of our teammates,” Amazon Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology Beth Galetti revealed in a Wednesday blog post. “I recognize this is difficult news, which is why I’m sharing what’s happening and why.”
She went on to write that the company has been “working to strengthen our organization by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy” since October.
At that time, Audacy covered another staff cut announcement from Galetti. Last October we also covered Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s comment that the company expected “that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using [artificial intelligence] extensively across the company.”
“While many teams finalized their organizational changes in October, other teams did not complete that work until now,” Galetti said Wednesday. “The reductions we are making today will impact approximately 16,000 roles across Amazon, and we’re again working hard to support everyone whose role is impacted.”
Support includes working with staff to find other roles within the company. For those who are not matched with a new role, Galetti said the company will “provide transition support including severance pay, outplacement services, health insurance benefits (as applicable), and more.”
Forbes reported Tuesday – the day before Galetti’s announcement – that Bezos “became the world’s third-richest person again,” surpassing Google co-founder Sergey Brin. According to the outlet, the reason why Bezos’ new worth rose by nearly $5 billion to $254 billion, was shares of Amazon rising following the announcement that it would shutter dozens of retail stores to expand its Whole Foods Market business.
Larry Page, the other Google co-founder, was in second place Tuesday with $274.3 billion and Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX was in first place with $775.2 billion. Though Bezos sold off a major portion of his Amazon shares in 2025 ahead of his marriage to Lauren Sanchez, Fortune reported this week that he still holds about 900 million shares of Amazon.
While those shares are keeping Bezos in the richest men club these days, Fortune also noted that he’s said he kept his actual Amazon salary at $80,000 during the early days of the company. He founded Amazon in 1994 out of his garage in Seattle, Wash.
Business Insider reported last November that the median employee across Amazon's global workforce earned $37,181. It also said the “e-commerce giant also calculated the numbers for its U.S. full-time workforce,” and found that the median worker earned $47,990 in 2024, up from $45,613 the prior year.
Per recent Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, median weekly earnings of the nation's 121.5 million full-time wage and salary workers were $1,204 last year, job openings decreased in seven states last November and unemployment rates were higher in six states last month.
Galetti said in the Wednesday blog post that Amazon plans to “continue hiring and investing in strategic areas and functions that are critical to our future.” She said the company is “still in the early stages of building every one of our businesses and there’s significant opportunity ahead.”
Additionally, Galetti also addressed the possibility that the repeated layoff announcements in recent months might signal “a new rhythm” for Amazon. However, she said “that’s not our plan.”