Amazon just announced 30,000 layoffs .. the largest in company history. But the number itself isn’t the story. What’s happening beneath the surface should concern every working person on Earth.
THE SCALE
10% of Amazon’s 350,000 corporate workforce. Gone. Not warehouse workers. Not seasonal staff. Engineers. Managers. Cloud architects. HR professionals. The “safe” jobs.
This eclipses their 2022-2023 cuts of 27,000. And it’s happening while Amazon pours $100+ billion into AI infrastructure in 2025 .. up from $83 billion in 2024.
THE ADMISSION
CEO Andy Jassy said it plainly earlier this year: “We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs being done today.”
Not “different” jobs. Fewer people. Full stop.
This isn’t about pandemic overcorrection anymore. This is the beginning of structural replacement.
THE MATH THAT DOESN’T WORK
AWS, logistics, payments, gaming, devices … cuts across every division. The company isn’t struggling. They’re optimizing. Replacing $100K salaries with AI systems that run 24/7 for pennies per query.
30,000 families. TODAY. How many tomorrow?
THE VOID
Here’s what should terrify you: There is no plan.
No UBI legislation. No automation taxes. No retraining infrastructure at scale. Just unemployment insurance designed for temporary gaps, not permanent technological displacement.
We’re running 1950s social programs against 2025 AI capabilities.
THE TIMELINE
Bill Gates suggested robot taxes. Andrew Yang campaigned on UBI. Economists have been warning us for years.
We nodded. We debated. We did nothing.
Now 30,000 Amazon employees will find out what “economic transition” actually feels like. And they won’t be the last.
THE QUESTION NO ONE WANTS TO ANSWER
If AI makes workers redundant faster than new jobs emerge, who buys the products? Who pays rent? Who sustains the economy?
You can’t have capitalism without consumers. You can’t have consumers without income.
Amazon just made that math problem real.
This isn’t fearmongering. It’s Tuesday, October 28, 2025. The emails go out today.
The age of AI displacement isn’t coming. It’s here. And we’re completely unprepared.