Amazon announced this week that it’s cutting 30,000 corporate jobs—the largest workforce reduction in the company’s history. CEO Andy Jassy framed it as a necessary response to AI automation. In a June 2025 memo to employees, he wrote: “We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs. It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce.”

It’s a compelling narrative. AI is getting smarter. Companies need to adapt. Jobs will be displaced. Efficiency demands it.

But when I looked at the numbers, they didn’t add up to that conclusion.

The Numbers Don’t Add Up

Recent statistics from macrotrends.net:

  • Amazon revenue for the quarter ending June 30, 2025 was $167.702B, a 13.33% increase year-over-year.
  • Amazon revenue for the twelve months ending June 30, 2025 was $670.038B, a 10.87% increase year-over-year.
  • Amazon annual revenue for 2024 was $637.959B, a 10.99% increase from 2023.
  • Amazon annual revenue for 2023 was $574.785B, a 11.83% increase from 2022.
  • Amazon annual revenue for 2022 was $513.983B, a 9.4% increase from 2021.

These aren’t the numbers of a company struggling to stay afloat. These are the numbers of a company optimizing for maximum profit extraction for years.

What AI Is Actually Replacing

Amazon says AI automation is making jobs obsolete. Let’s look at what’s actually being automated:

The 30,000 layoffs hit hardest in:

  • Human resources
  • Operations support
  • Marketing and outreach
  • Corporate support functions

Meanwhile, leaked documents reveal Amazon plans to replace 600,000 warehouse workers with robots by 2033. The company already has over 1 million robots—nearly matching its 1.56 million human workforce.

But here’s the thing: Amazon’s Shreveport warehouse, the testing ground for heavy automation, cut the workforce by 25% initially and plans to reduce it by 50% by 2026. Morgan Stanley estimates this automation will save Amazon $4 billion by 2027.

Those savings come straight from one place: not paying human workers.

The Pattern Across Big Tech

This isn’t just an Amazon story. It’s a Big Tech playbook.

In 2024, over 42,000 tech workers were laid off despite record profits:

  • Microsoft: Laid off 6,000 in May, then 9,000 in July—then reported a 17.6% revenue jump to $62 billion
  • Google: Cut over 1,000 workers before announcing a 13% revenue increase to $86.3 billion
  • Meta: Laid off dozens of employees despite a 25% revenue jump to $40.1 billion and net income that soared 201%

Mark Zuckerberg called 2023 the “year of efficiency.” What he meant was: cut payroll, boost margins, please Wall Street.

The market rewarded these moves enthusiastically. When you can’t grow revenue at the top line, you optimize profit at the bottom line. And labor is always the biggest expense.

The Convenient AI Narrative

AI makes a perfect cover story for profit maximization.

When you say “AI is replacing these jobs,” it sounds inevitable. It sounds like progress. It sounds like you’re adapting to the future rather than simply choosing to pay fewer people.

But look at where the money goes:

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s compensation hit $40.1 million in 2024—a 37% increase. His base salary is $365,000, but his 2021 stock grant, originally valued at $212 million, vests through 2031 regardless of company performance.

Amazon plans to spend $100 billion or more on capital expenses in 2025, up at least 20% from 2024. Much of that goes to AI infrastructure and automation.

The question isn’t whether AI can do these jobs. The question is: who benefits when it does?

What’s Actually Happening

The evidence suggests this isn’t AI automation forcing companies to adapt. It’s companies choosing to automate to maximize profit, then using AI as narrative cover.

Consider these facts:

  1. Amazon’s efficiency ratio improved dramatically before the layoffs. Gross profit margin went from 39.57% to 48.85% in four years. These jobs weren’t becoming unprofitable—they were becoming “not profitable enough.”

  2. The timing is strategic, not necessary. Amazon could afford to keep these workers. Instead, they’ll save $2.1-3.6 billion annually by cutting them. That money will flow to shareholders and executives, not workers.

  3. Amazon doesn’t even return much to shareholders. Unlike Meta and Google, Amazon pays no dividends and has barely touched its $10 billion stock buyback authorization. The money stays in the company, reinvested into more automation that eliminates more jobs.

  4. Wall Street rewards job cuts as “efficiency.” Investors celebrate these moves because they signal focus on profit margins over people. The message is clear: human labor is an expense to minimize.

The Real Cost

MIT professor Daron Acemoglu, who won the Nobel Prize in economics for his work on automation, said this about Amazon: “Nobody else has the same incentive as Amazon to find the way to automate. Once they work out how to do this profitably, it will spread to others, too.”

He’s right. Amazon is writing the playbook. Other companies will follow.

But here’s what gets lost in the “AI inevitability” narrative:

These are choices, not foregone conclusions.

Companies could choose to:

  • Retrain workers for new roles
  • Share productivity gains with employees
  • Maintain stable employment while still investing in technology
  • Accept slightly lower profit margins in exchange for being a decent employer

Amazon’s gross profit margin is 48.85%. Operating margin is 10.75%. These are healthy margins. They have room to treat people better and still make enormous profits.

They’re choosing not to.

What This Means for the Rest of Us

If you work in tech—or really any knowledge work—this should concern you.

The narrative says “AI is coming for routine jobs.” But look at what’s actually being cut: HR analytics, training coordination, marketing, operations support. These aren’t purely routine jobs. They require judgment, context, relationships, and organizational knowledge—the kind of work that actually becomes more valuable with AI, not less.

Amazon is betting they can replace these roles with AI and maintain performance. Maybe they’re right. Maybe they’re wrong. I’ve seen AI agents break things spectacularly, and that’s with human oversight. Either way, Amazon is willing to experiment on their workforce to find out.

And if it works? Every other company will follow.

The “AI inevitability” story serves a purpose: it makes this all seem like natural evolution rather than deliberate choice. It positions job cuts as adapting to technology rather than choosing profit over people.

But the numbers tell a different story.

The Questions We Should Be Asking

When companies announce AI-driven layoffs, we should ask:

  1. Are these job cuts necessary for survival, or optimal for profit? Amazon’s record profits suggest the latter.

  2. Where do the cost savings go? To workers being retrained? To customers via lower prices? Or to executives and shareholders?

  3. What happens to displaced workers? Are they offered retraining, severance, placement support? Or just shown the door?

  4. Could the company afford to do better? Amazon has $2.28 trillion in market cap. They could afford to treat people better.

  5. Is this the kind of company we want to be? Not “we” as in Amazon, but “we” as in society. Is this the relationship between capital and labor we want to normalize?

A Different Future Is Possible

AI doesn’t have to mean mass displacement. Technology doesn’t have to mean choosing between people and progress.

But as long as we accept the narrative that “AI is replacing these jobs” without asking why and who benefits, we’re letting companies off the hook for what are ultimately human decisions.

Amazon chose to cut 30,000 jobs while sitting on record profits and paying the CEO $40 million.

That’s not AI. That’s capitalism.

And until we’re willing to call it what it is, we’ll keep seeing companies blame technology for decisions that are really about greed.

Jamie Duncan is a technical architect and writer exploring the intersection of technology, business, and society. Views are his own.