Amazon Just Announced Big Layoffs. New State Laws Will Make the Company Explain that Decision.

Amazon's announcement, coming months after its CEO linked AI to workforce reduction, will test new state laws about the role of AI in hiring and firing.

Anyone in a corporate job at Amazon this morning sat down to that scariest of work emails, in this case one from Beth Galetti, senior vice president of people, experience and technology, that began “I want to let you know that we're making additional organizational changes across Amazon that will impact some of our teammates.” By the time that first sip of coffee hit, the alarmed reader would have reached the crucial part: “The reductions we are making today will impact approximately 16,000 roles across Amazon.”

The message was indirect about the why, but intimated that the efficiencies of new technology are part of it:

Some of you might ask if this is the beginning of a new rhythm – where we announce broad reductions every few months. That’s not our plan. But just as we always have, every team will continue to evaluate the ownership, speed, and capacity to invent for customers, and make adjustments as appropriate. That’s never been more important than it is today in a world that’s changing faster than ever.

Her language echoes a more direct missive from CEO Andy Jassy last June, which praised AI’s ability to “change the scope and speed at which we can innovate for customers,” and in which he he openly predicted that Amazon “will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”

67,000 corporate employees work in the area surrounding Amazon’s Seattle headquarters — at press time it’s not clear how many of those were affected by the layoffs. Photo by Alexandra Tran on Unsplash

The company previously laid off 27,000 employees between late 2022 and early 2023, and today’s cuts are to a corporate workforce of 350,000. They also arrive a week before the company’s corporate earnings call for 2025.

But Amazon’s layoffs run directly into two new state laws that grapple with the threat of A.I. to employment. In New York State, where at least 660 people were laid off today, companies with more than 25 employees in any one facility must file notice in advance, and they must give employees 90 days’ notice. WARN notices filed in October did that, and Galetti’s message tells workers that they’ll have 90 days to look for a new role internally.

In addition, a March 2025 amendment to labor law in New York now requires that companies laying people off have to disclose whether “technological innovation or automation" was involved in the decision or the process, and must identify whether it was AI, robotics, automation, or something else. Jassy’s comments, and Galetti’s mention of “a world that’s changing faster than ever” suggest that they’ll need to check that box. But so far, they haven’t. “The New York State Department of Labor is closely monitoring the impact of AI on the workforce,” the department told Hard Reset when asked about Amazon’s New York layoffs. “As of today [January 29th, 2026], there have not been any notices submitted to the Department that list AI as a reason for the layoff or closure.”

In Illinois, where 1,000 corporate Amazon employees work in Chicago’s tech hub, the law requires that employers must disclose any time AI “influences or facilitates” an employment decision, including providing workers with the AI product name, what decisions it affects, its purpose, data collected, and positions affected. Illinois law applies to recruiting, hiring, promotion, discipline, firing, training — more or less everything. And the company must keep records for four years, all on pain of a worker lawsuit. It’s not clear as of this writing whether any Chicago workers are affected — no WARN notices are filed with the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity for this round of Amazon layoffs.

In effect, New York’s law addresses the “why” of AI-driven corporate layoffs, and Illinois law address the “how.” Together, these state laws offer us the first complete picture of AI’s role in layoff decisions, and workers’ first chance for legal recourse if companies seek to hide it. And they could give us an answer to several more questions: Is AI deciding who gets offers for those internal positions in the 90-day window? Is AI screening the 16,000 workers competing for remaining roles? Did AI tools identify which 16,000 jobs to cut? Workers in Illinois and New York might actually find out, and companies seeking to replace employees with AI in either state will now have to answer the same questions.

According to former Amazon workers and reporting from several outlets, Amazon famously targets a percentage of its corporate workforce for layoffs each year, more or less to keep everyone afraid for their jobs and performing above and beyond. As one insider told Business Insider, this policy of cutting workers to meet a quota called “unregretted attrition rate” is “like firing someone who got an A- when the rest of the class got A’s.”

Now AI adoption seems to be part of that decision-making process. As one former employee told me, AI adoption is measured as a performance metric at Amazon. And as Jassy told employees last summer about the need to bring AI into their role, “those who embrace this change, become conversant in AI, help us build and improve our AI capabilities internally and deliver for customers, will be well-positioned to have high impact and help us reinvent the company.” Left unsaid in his message was what happens to those who don’t embrace that change. Now, at least in two states, people in that camp will at the very least have some sense of what role AI played in their job loss, and as new federal legislation is introduced at a time when job losses are mounting, Illinois and New York could lead the way for the rest of the nation.

This post was updated 1/29/26 to include a quote from the New York State Department of Labor.