Amazon layoffs in Seattle, Bellevue are ‘business decisions’

December 17, 2025

Amazon announced another round of layoffs on Saturday that will affect 84 employees in Seattle and Bellevue, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filing.

The layoffs are scheduled to take effect between February 2, 2026, and February 23, 2026. Employees working in software development, recruiting, human resources, and engineering, among other departments, will be affected.

“We’ve informed a relatively small number of employees that their roles will be eliminated as a result of individual business decisions,” Amazon spokesman Brad Glasser wrote in a prepared statement, according to The Puget Sound Business Journal. “We don’t make any decisions like this lightly, and we’re focused on supporting employees who are impacted with resources to support their next steps.”

Amazon lays off 84 employees in Seattle, Bellevue

Amazon will lay off 70 employees in Seattle, eight employees in Bellevue, and six remote employees.

In late October, the Seattle-based retail giant confirmed it would cut approximately 14,000 corporate jobs. The latest round of layoffs is unrelated to that announcement.

“Amazon has about 350,000 corporate employees globally. So if you’re talking about up to 30,000, that’s a pretty substantial chunk,” GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop said in October.

Amazon had approximately 65,000 corporate employees in Washington before this year’s layoffs, with roughly 50,000 of those employees working in Seattle, and about 14,300 in Bellevue, according to The Puget Sound Business Journal.

Including the latest layoff announcement, Amazon has laid off nearly 2,400 Washington employees in 2025 alone.

In October, Beth Galetti wrote in a memo to employees that the company would reduce management layers to move more quickly for customers.

“We’re convinced that we need to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business,” Galetti said in the memo, according to The Puget Sound Business Journal.

Amazon previously slowed down its hiring in August ahead of the company’s largest layoff announcement in years. The hiring slowdown impacted various operations departments, including human resources, devices and services, and retail.

Employees have noted that the company’s internal culture has grown tense, with workers fearing that any position could be eliminated.

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