Amazon replace manual workers
E-commerce colossus Amazon is planning to replace all menial workers with robots as the company strives to improve efficiency, delivery speeds, and cut costs.
“I’m not shy about the fact that I want to eliminate every menial, mundane, and repetitive job out there. That’s what we do inside of Amazon,” Amazon’s CTO of Robotics, Tye Brady, told FOX Business at Web Summit 2025 in Lisbon.
According to the New York Times, Amazon plans to replace up to 500,000 menial workers with robots over time. By 2027, Amazon plans to reduce the need to hire 160,000 people by deploying robots in 40 sites, saving the company $0.30 per package handled.
Based on 2024 projections of roughly 9 billion package deliveries, Amazon could save billions of dollars in handling costs alone by replacing menial workers with robots.
Amazon to deploy 1 million robots to replace menial workers.
According to its internal estimates, Amazon believes it can automate 75% of its operations, drastically reducing the need for menial workers. Amazon has already witnessed limited success. In 2024, it succeeded in replacing 25% menial employees with robots after deploying about 1,000 robots.
However, to achieve its ambitious target, Amazon needs to deploy up to a million robots across its global network of 350 warehouses and 1,200 logistics facilities.
Meanwhile, Amazon is struggling to meet staffing needs to keep up with demands. Since 2018, Amazon’s workforce tripled, reaching 1.5 million by 2024.
However, according to the Times technology reporter Karen Weise, who broke the news, the leaked Amazon’s internal documents may not be representative of the whole picture.
For example, during the 2025 holiday season, the company plans to employ 250,000 part-time workers to keep up with demands and ensure timely delivery. That year alone, Amazon hired nearly as many temporary workers as it had over the previous two years combined.
Good news for Amazon’s menial workers replaced by robots.
To address the anticipated job losses, Amazon will invest $2.5 billion to help menial workers and negatively affected communities to upskill and adapt to the changing labor demands.
According to Brady, while jobs will always exist, their nature is guaranteed to evolve, thus creating the need for employees to learn new skills to remain relevant in the labor market.
“Jobs will change. We’ve seen jobs change, tasks change,” Brady said.
Subsequently, he suggested that the company has a responsibility to help its employees upskill to remain relevant in the evolving job market.
“We have a responsibility. I think any tech company has a responsibility to upskill your employees,” he added. “Amazon is committed to those efforts because we realize that jobs will change.”
Key drivers of labor market changes include the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), which has already claimed hundreds of thousands of jobs in the tech sector. Meanwhile, Amazon plans to invest over $125 billion in AI to compete with tech giants Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, and OpenAI, which are already ahead of the pack.
14,000 skilled Amazon workers to lose jobs.
On October 28, 2025, Amazon announced it would lay off 14,000 corporate employees in a cost-cutting mission intended to reduce operational costs.
Quoting anonymous sources, The Wall Street Journal reported that the e-commerce giant plans to slash 30,000 corporate jobs or 10% of its skilled workforce.
“The reductions are the latest cost-cutting move for the tech giant, which is seeking to slim down and conserve cash,” the Journal stated.
In mid-October, Amazon had also announced it would slash its human resources workforce by 15%. Besides Amazon, technology giants Microsoft, Alphabet, Intel, and Meta have laid off workers, resulting in more than 200,000 tech job losses in 2025.
Amazon competes against Elon Musk’s SpaceX and China in the global race to deliver internet access anywhere on Earth from space, and launched more than two dozen satellites into orbit in 2025.
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