Amazon has confirmed another round of job cuts, with fewer than 1,000 white-collar employees affected, primarily in its Stores business that oversees the company’s main e-commerce operation.
The reductions came as Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days promotion was under way, with the two-day shopping event beginning Tuesday and running through Wednesday.
Employees affected by the cuts included workers in the US, India and the UK, according to posts shared on internal Slack channels and information reviewed by Reuters.
Amazon said the restructuring was intended to align its retail organization with its priorities.
“We’ve adjusted parts of our Stores business because we believe this structure will better enable us to deliver on our priorities,” a spokesperson said in an emailed statement, Reuters reported.
The internal communications indicated that several divisions within the Stores organization were affected, including customer service and selling partner services, with other Amazon units potentially also involved.
Amazon stock was down by about 0.5% during premarket trading on Thursday.
Latest cuts follow broader restructuring
The layoffs are the latest in a series of smaller reductions following Amazon’s much larger workforce restructuring.
The company began eliminating about 30,000 jobs last year, with cuts continuing into January.
The reductions followed a period of rapid hiring during the pandemic, when demand for online shopping surged and Amazon expanded its workforce significantly.
Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos addressed the earlier cuts in a Fox News interview aired Wednesday, saying the company had grown its workforce too aggressively.
“People were staying home and they were ordering, and it was an incredible, stressful period for us, by the way,” he said when asked about the 30,000 jobs lost in the previous round.
“The whole team worked extremely hard and did so much, but we really grew our headcount.”
Amazon redirects talent toward AI
The restructuring also reflects a broader shift in how Amazon is allocating employees and investment.
The company has approached some former employees, including people affected by earlier layoffs, about openings in AWS and its AI businesses.
The move highlights how Amazon is reducing headcount in some traditional functions while directing resources toward cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
The trend is playing out across the technology sector.
Meta eliminated about 8,000 positions in May, while Microsoft cut more than 5,000 jobs between July and September.
Technology remains the biggest source of cuts
Amazon’s latest reductions come despite a broader decline in US announced layoffs in September.
US employers announced 43,281 job cuts during the month, down 18% from August and 20% from September last year, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
September’s total was the lowest for the month since 2022.
Technology companies, however, moved in the opposite direction.
The sector announced 10,799 cuts in September, up 77% from August.
Technology companies have announced 165,925 job cuts so far this year, 54% more than during the same period in 2025.
The sector accounts for 29% of all announced US job cuts in 2026, more than any other industry, underscoring the continuing shift in technology spending and employment toward AI-driven priorities.
The post Amazon cuts nearly 1,000 jobs during Prime event as AI spending reshapes workforce appeared first on Invezz
