Amazon layoffs continue, but 121 Washington cuts point to more than AI
Amazon is cutting another 121 jobs in Washington state, extending a layoff campaign that has already removed thousands of positions from the company this year.
A Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filing submitted to Washington’s Employment Security Department shows the latest cuts are spread across Amazon’s corporate offices in Seattle and Bellevue and its BFI1 fulfillment center in Sumner. The reductions are scheduled to take effect throughout October, with separations beginning Oct. 1 and continuing through Oct. 27.
The largest group is at Amazon’s SEA106 building in Bellevue, where 49 employees were notified. The affected positions include software development engineers, applied scientists, senior software managers and a vice president of legal.
Seattle is also losing employees from several downtown offices. The positions include product managers, technical writers and a human resources director. At the Sumner fulfillment center, 32 jobs are being eliminated, including warehouse associates, service technicians and safety specialists. One remote position is also listed in the filing.
Amazon has not attributed this specific round of cuts to artificial intelligence.
Brad Glasser, an Amazon spokesperson, told GeekWire that company teams regularly review their structures and sometimes determine that certain roles are no longer needed.
Amazon said affected employees were given 90 days of advance notice and can seek other internal positions before their jobs end.
That detail matters because Amazon’s layoffs have increasingly been described through the lens of AI. The company has been investing heavily in artificial intelligence and has eliminated roles across parts of its business that are closely tied to automation and new AI systems. Amazon’s 2025 corporate cuts were explicitly linked in part to AI adoption, according to Reuters.
But the Washington filings tell a messier story.
Amazon’s 16,000-job reduction announced in January was presented by the company as part of an effort to reduce management layers, increase ownership and remove bureaucracy. Amazon said some teams completed their organizational changes later than others.
The latest Washington cuts include technical jobs that can easily feed the AI narrative, yet they also include legal, HR, warehouse and service positions. There is no single job category that explains all 121 eliminations.
The timing also shows that Amazon’s workforce reduction is not one event tied to one technology decision. Washington filings show about 2,198 layoffs in February, roughly 400 jobs connected to Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go store closures in January, another 57 positions cut during the summer, and now 121 more.
Amazon’s own explanation has consistently focused on organizational changes, cost discipline and shifting business priorities. AI is part of that strategy, but it does not appear to explain every job that is disappearing.
For workers in Seattle, Bellevue and Sumner, the distinction offers little comfort. The practical reality is that Amazon continues to shrink parts of its workforce even as it expands spending on AI, cloud infrastructure and other strategic areas.
The latest 121 cuts are another sign that Amazon is not simply replacing people with machines. It is reshaping the company, trimming roles it considers unnecessary and moving resources toward businesses it believes deserve more investment.
AI may be helping accelerate that process. The layoffs themselves show there is more to Amazon’s workforce strategy than AI alone.
