Overview
- Internal documents indicate Amazon expects to avoid hiring more than 160,000 U.S. roles by 2027, saving about $0.30 per item and roughly $12.6 billion from 2025 to 2027.
- Longer term, the company’s robotics roadmap projects forgoing over 600,000 hires by 2033 as it works toward automating roughly 75% of operations.
- Amazon already operates about one million robots and is replicating a highly automated Shreveport, Louisiana prototype at roughly 40 facilities by the end of 2027, including a Virginia Beach site opened in April.
- The leaked materials outline PR tactics such as community events and the use of terms like “advanced technology” or “cobot” in place of “automation” or “AI.”
- Amazon says the materials reflect one team’s view and are incomplete, notes plans to hire about 250,000 seasonal workers, and faces expert warnings that broad automation could make it a net job destroyer.