Dozens of Amazon employees working on the retailer's book divisions have been laid off. As reported by Reuters, Amazon confirmed that it's cutting jobs across the Goodreads review site and Kindle units, which impacts fewer than 100 workers.
Amazon says the recent layoffs across Goodreads and Kindle divisions are meant to improve efficiency and streamline operations. The giant retailer has constantly reduced staff across various divisions over the past few years. According to CEO Andy Jassy, reducing headcounts helps the company to eliminate bureaucracy.
"As part of our ongoing work to make our teams and programs operate more efficiently and to better align with our business roadmap, we've made the difficult decision to eliminate a small number of roles within the Books organization," an Amazon spokesperson said.
Layoffs recently impacted employees in Amazon's Wondery podcast division, devices and services units, communications, and in-store staff. However, Amazon's Q1 results show the retailer has added about 4,000 jobs compared to Q4 2024.
After the Covid pandemic settled down, many companies began laying off thousands of staff they hired during the pandemic to respond to growing demands. The layoff trend among tech firms still exists today, and AI has amplified it.
The latest data shows that in 2025, about 62,832 tech employees were laid off across 141 tech companies. Also, 152,922 tech employees across 551 companies were laid off in 2024. More layoffs are expected to occur due to declining economic growth, tariffs, and the expansion of AI across companies.
Amazon is also gearing up to double down in AI investments and robotics. The company has recently announced the forming of a new agentic AI team to develop an agentic AI framework for use in robotics. Also, a new report by The Information indicates that Amazon has begun testing humanoid robots for package delivery.
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