Amazon Layoffs: The Role of Artificial Intelligence is Unclear

Companies' AI Adaptation Process Takes Time

Amazon announced last week that it laid off 16,000 employees. Company CEO Andy Jassy explained that 'efficiency gains' from artificial intelligence were behind this decision. However, economists are cautious about whether job losses can be directly attributed to AI.

Karan Girotra, a management professor at Cornell University's Business School, stated regarding the issue, "We don't know yet." Girotra noted that there is no clear answer to the question of whether people are actually losing their jobs to AI.

Goldman Sachs Report: Impact Limited

According to investment firm Goldman Sachs' AI adoption tracker report, "very few employees have been affected by corporate layoffs attributed to AI since December 2025." The report was published in mid-January, before AI-related layoffs were announced at Amazon, travel giant Expedia, and social media platform Pinterest.

The report noted that AI's impact on the overall labor market is still limited, but some effects may be felt in areas where AI can handle many basic job tasks such as writing emails, creating marketing copy, generating synthetic images, answering questions, and assisting with coding.

Middle Management Positions at Risk

Girotra stated that if job losses are occurring due to AI, they would most likely be middle management positions eliminated 'to reduce costs.' The professor emphasized that it takes time for companies to adjust their management structures to enable working with a smaller workforce as they integrate AI.

"It requires a lot of adjustment and most of the gains accrue to individual workers rather than the organization," said Girotra, adding that most employees save time and finish their work earlier when using AI.

Amazon May Be Reducing Pandemic-Era Employment

Amazon's 16,000 corporate layoffs are part of a broader staff reduction at the e-commerce giant. The company also announced that approximately 5,000 retail employees from its US stores were laid off. Since last October, when Jassy first began pushing for AI-focused organizational changes, 14,000 more employees had lost their jobs.

Girotra indicated that Amazon is most likely stepping back from over-employment during the COVID-19 pandemic. "So you might have been potentially inflated in the first place, you reduce headcount, you attribute it to AI, and now you have a value story," he said.

CEO Andy Jassy told Amazon employees last June to "be curious, educate themselves, attend workshops and training, use and experiment with AI as much as possible, and participate in team brainstorming to figure out how to invent faster and more comprehensively for our customers and how to achieve more with fewer resources."

The transformative role of AI in business and companies' strategies for integrating this technology are becoming even more critical in 2026, where choosing the right AI is no longer just about model selection.