For those who work at large companies, on one hand it should provide many opportunities within the company to grow your career. On the other hand, it is a large company and every once in a while, the company right sizes itself with large layoffs. If you work in economic development, having a large company relocate to your city is wonderful, however the downside is the company will right size itself every once in while. Everyone hopes it is the other person affected, because they add value, but it is a numbers situation.

In an article written by Karen Weise of The New York Times News Service, one of the largest private sector employers is Amazon. Recently Amazon announced they delivered 13 billion packages arriving the same or next day globally which was the good news. Corporately they also announced 16,000 employees around the world are being let go to trim bureaucracy and free up money for plans to spend on artificial intelligence.

The announcement of the cuts was expected as Amazon cut 14,000 jobs in October and relay plans to cut more in the first quarter of 2026 or after the holiday season of 2025.

Beth Galetti, Amazon’s senior VP of people experience and technology noted every team will continue to evaluate the ownership, speed and capacity to invent for customers, and to make adjustments as appropriate.

Amazon was expected to announce sales were over $211 billion and profits over $21 billion.

Amazon had 1,578,000 employees in the third quarter. Most of those were hourly workers in its warehouses and operations. At the warehouse level, Amazon has ambitious plans to replace more than half of million jobs with robots.

Amazon was on the path to spend $125 billion on data centers and other capital expenditures.

Amazon also announced the Amazon GO cashierless stores will be shut down, some will be replaced by Whole Foods Market locations. Amazon is expecting to open 100 new Whole Foods stores in the next few years.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, as an investor you want to see some layoffs in a large organization. At times there will be growth, but layoffs imply cost cutting and right sizing the business and the expectations to continue to earn profits. For investors, announcing layoffs can be a good thing as long as the expectation of management is it is an adjustment rather than cutting profit centers. If the company cuts profit centers, find alternatives.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.