Amazon announced Tuesday it was cutting 14,000 corporate jobs, becoming the latest major corporation to cut its workforce in a rapidly declining economy.
The mass culling of 14,000 people is just the first salvo of job cuts at the online retail giant, with Reuters reporting the company may cut up to 30,000 corporate jobs by the end of the year.
Amazon's massive job cuts are just a fraction of the tens of thousands of jobs that have been eliminated this year. Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks publicly announced layoffs at tech companies, has calculated 128,732 layoffs across 218 different tech companies in 2025.
Companies announced thousands of layoffs this week alone: electric vehicle maker Rivian and parent company Facebook Meta each cuts 600 jobs, charter communications are cut 1200 rolesand Paramount reduction of 1000 employees.
Amazon, for its part, blamed artificial intelligence for the layoffs, writing in memo employees: “This generation of artificial intelligence is the most transformative technology we have seen since the Internet, and it allows companies to innovate much faster than ever before (in existing market segments and entirely new ones). We believe we need to be more organized, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our clients and business.”
However, it is worth noting that Amazon is owned by Jeff Bezos, who owns became friends with President Donald Trump and did my best don't anger the vindictive leader.
Given that Amazon is in the retail business (which is largely impacted by Trump's tariffs, which have forced companies to either raise prices or cut costs to offset lower profits), it can't be ruled out that the tariffs are behind at least some of the cuts.
Ultimately, this week's high number of layoffs is another worrying sign for an economy that is facing a double crisis: high inflation and weakening labor market – with economists blame Trump idiotic tariffs due to dangerous economic conditions.
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Even before the mass layoffs were announced, the Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly employment reports showed that job growth was almost stagnant since April, when Trump first announced his tariffs.
Indeed, the economy is actually lost my job in June— this happened for the first time since the start of the Covid-19 crisis in 2020.
Because the government is currently closed, the BLS is not releasing monthly employment reports. And that's probably welcome news for Trump at this point, as the report could show another month of job losses.
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