Amazon reportedly cuts jobs in its retail unit during Prime Big Deal Days sale

Two cardboard shipping boxes sealed with branded tape, on a dark blue surface. — *Credit: Anirudh on Unsplas*

Image Credits — *Credit: Anirudh on Unsplas*

Amazon has cut a small number of office jobs, mostly in its Stores division, the company confirmed on Wednesday. The cuts came during Prime Big Deal Days, its two-day sale on October 6 and 7.

Business Insider first reported the layoffs, and then a person familiar with the matter told Reuters that fewer than 1,000 office workers lost their jobs.

The Stores unit manages Amazon’s primary online shop, and, as Reuters reported, messages in an internal Slack channel indicated that various teams were affected, including customer service and selling partner services, which assist external sellers.

Business Insider reported that there had also been staff reductions in the marketplace support and engineering departments, with employees from the US, India, and the UK being laid off. In India, the job cuts occurred at the same time the Amazon Great Indian Festival sale began.

On Tuesday, news of the layoffs spread among the affected staff when they discussed it in an internal Slack channel with nearly 37,000 members, Business Insider reported.

“We’ve adjusted parts of our Stores business,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement, adding that the new structure would help it focus on its main goals.

The cuts follow a much larger round. Amazon cut about 14,000 office jobs in October 2025 and another 16,000 in January, for a total of around 30,000. Since then, it has made several smaller cuts.

Meanwhile, founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos said in a Fox News interview aired on Wednesday that further cuts were needed. He said Amazon hired too many people during the pandemic, when online orders surged.

“We really grew our head count,” Bezos told Fox News.

The latest cuts also come as Amazon spends heavily on AI data centres, Business Insider reported. Chief executive Andy Jassy has said Amazon plans to spend a record $220bn on data centres, chips, and other infrastructure, mostly for AWS and AI.

At the same time, Amazon has contacted some former employees, including people it laid off, about AI, machine learning, and cloud jobs. Earlier this week, HubSpot cut 660 jobs as it turns to AI.

Amazon has not said whether more cuts are planned.

Story by Alina Maria Stan

Alina Maria Stan builds connections that people actually feel. As co-founder and COO of Tekpon, she turns product intuition into real moment (show all) Alina Maria Stan builds connections that people actually feel. As co-founder and COO of Tekpon, she turns product intuition into real moments of discovery, shaping how teams find and adopt SaaS every day. Since 2020, she has led Tekpon’s brand voice, media strategy, and growth plays with a clear focus on human outcomes behind every metric. Before Tekpon, Alina followed curiosity across industries and countries. She was CEO of King Casino Bonus and led affiliate and brand strategy at Extremoo Media and Fable Media in Denmark, where she learned how to build partnerships that last. Early on, she sharpened her CRM and pricing instincts at K.H. ApS, always asking why customers choose what they choose. Her approach is rooted in more than a decade of international experience and two master’s degrees, one in Sustainable Consumption from the Technical University of Munich and one in Consumer Affairs Management from Aarhus University.