Amazon will reduce its global corporate workforce by about 14,000 people from Tuesday, Oct 28, with more cuts expected in 2026, and industry observers say Singapore may not be spared. The layoffs are smaller than the 30,000 job losses previous reports had indicated.
The move comes as part of a major shakeup driven in part by the company’s increasing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), as well as efforts to address over-hiring during the pandemic and control costs ahead of the crucial holiday shopping season.
Amazon currently employs about 1.56 million people worldwide, including roughly 350,000 corporate employees. In Singapore, the company has around 2,500 staff across its cloud, corporate, retail, technology, and operations functions. The city-state also serves as Amazon’s Asia-Pacific headquarters.
An Amazon spokesperson for the region did not answer a query on whether the job cuts would affect workers here in Singapore, but referred The Straits Times to Amazon Senior Vice President of Human Resources Beth Galetti’s memo.
Galetti sent letters to workers’ personal email addresses early Tuesday morning that read: “You are no longer required to perform work on Amazon’s behalf.”
The letter added that the company is giving most staff 90 days to find a new role internally, along with severance pay, outplacement services, and continued health insurance coverage for those affected by the layoffs.
She explained that the layoffs are part of the firm’s ongoing efforts to cut bureaucracy and reporting layers, and shift resources to its “biggest bets,” which she did not specify. Galetti added that the company would continue to hire in key strategic areas while continuing job cuts in 2026, as CEO Andy Jassy mentioned earlier this year.
Amazon’s latest round of layoffs represents its deepest job cuts since 27,000 jobs were eliminated in late 2022 and early 2023. The move comes despite the firm being profitable—in 2024, Amazon reported revenues of US$638 billion (S$826 billion) and operating profits exceeding US$68 billion.
“The world is changing quickly. This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before,” explained Galetti on why the firm proceeded with the layoffs.
She added: “We need to be organised more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business.”
Amazon joins a slew of tech giants making job cuts in Singapore, including Microsoft, Meta, and TikTok, as well as firms across the banking, energy, media, and manufacturing sectors. According to official figures, more than 7,000 workers were laid off in Singapore in the first half of 2025.
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Also Read: Amazon CEO announces upcoming job cuts, plans to replace human labour with AI
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Last modified: October 29, 2025
About the Author: Jeremy P.
