Why are Amazon, Oracle and others laying off thousands? AI is not the only reason: What employees, insiders and economists say

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Why are Amazon, Oracle and others laying off thousands? AI is not the only reason: What employees, insiders and economists say

By @httweets
Publication Date: 2026-02-02 12:10:00

Thousands of layoffs at Amazon, Oracle and other technology-focused companies are regularly blamed Artificial Intelligence (AI), But affected workers and analysts see reasons beyond and behind it.

Economists are wondering whether AI is the real reason for the layoffs or whether it is the message a company wants to send to its shareholders on Wall Street. (Bloomberg photo)

“AI needs to drive return on investment,” said N Lee Plumb, his team’s head of AI enablement Amazoncommented on the reasons after the dismissal.

Plumb said he knows for certain that Amazon’s firing last week was not a failure to embrace the company’s AI plans. He told the AP news agency that he used Amazon’s new AI coding tool so extensively that the company named him one of its top users.

Assumptions, theories and facts about technical layoffs

Many came from Amazon 16,000 corporate layoffs reflected CEO Andy Jassy’s push to “reduce our overall corporate workforce while achieving efficiencies…”