Corporate Layoffs and Restructuring

Amazon said Wednesday it will cut another 16,000 jobs across the company, just three months after eliminating 14,000 roles as part of a broad efficiency drive, according to a blog post by senior vice president Beth Galetti. The latest cuts hit teams that had not yet completed restructuring following October’s layoffs, and come as large U.S. employers increasingly talk about 'doing more with fewer people' through AI productivity gains, reversing pandemic over‑hiring, and reducing costs amid persistent inflation. Galetti wrote that while the company is trimming staff, it will continue hiring and investing in 'strategic areas and functions that are critical to our future,' saying Amazon is still in the early stages of building each of its businesses. The move fits into what analysts and workers have dubbed 'forever layoffs,' in which companies opt for serial rounds of smaller cuts rather than a single mass downsizing, and follows recent job‑cut announcements at UPS and Pinterest that have stoked worries about how automation and tighter margins are reshaping white‑ and blue‑collar work. For U.S. workers and policymakers, Amazon’s latest retrenchment is another data point in a labor market where headline unemployment remains low but major corporate employers are quietly paring headcount and retooling for an AI‑heavy future.