New jobs numbers posted to Amazon’s corporate website show the changing footprint of its U.S. workforce for the first time since the company started to curb the growth of its fulfillment and delivery network a year ago.
GeekWire compared the company’s latest stats, recently updated on its “About Amazon” website, with our own archive of numbers previously published by the company, dating back to 2015. Here’s what we found.
Amazon employment fell in 33 states between December 2021 and January 2023. The company shed jobs in many of the states where it had been growing rapidly.
- Amazon’s employment in California declined by 8,000 people, or 5%, from 170,000 to 162,000. California remains the largest state for Amazon employment even after the decrease.
- Texas, which was briefly the second-largest state for Amazon employment, slipped to No. 3 (behind Washington state) with a decline of 7,000 people, or 7%, from 95,000 to 88,000.
- In Tennessee, Amazon employment declined by 8,000 people, or 25%, from 31,000 to 23,000. Amazon was previously growing rapidly in Tennessee. It has established a large operations headquarters in Nashville.
The trends coincide with Amazon’s move a year ago to rein in the growth of its warehouses, shedding employees largely through attrition, after overstaffing its facilities to handle pandemic-driven demand.
Amazon has “scrutinized every process path in our fulfillment centers and transportation network and redesigned scores of processes and mechanisms, resulting in steady productivity gains and cost reductions over the last few quarters,” wrote CEO Andy Jassy in his annual letter last week. “There’s more work to do, but we’re pleased with our trajectory and the meaningful upside in front of us.”
The state-by-state employment declines are unprecedented in Amazon’s history, following more than a decade of extraordinary growth in the company’s fulfillment and delivery network.
GeekWire’s records show only one prior instance in which Amazon’s employment declined year-over-year in any state. That was in 2021, when the company’s workforce in West Virginia dipped by 100 people, to 400 employees. The number in West Virginia declined by another 100 employees, to 300, as of this year.
“We’re always evaluating our network and making adjustments based on what matters most to customers, our employees, and the long-term health of our businesses,” an Amazon spokesperson said in response to GeekWire’s inquiry. “As is typical, changes in headcount at individual sites – both increases and decreases – occur naturally through attrition or reflect evolving business needs.”
The overall decline last year coincided with a push by workers to unionize some Amazon warehouses. But there’s no clear correlation in the jobs numbers.
- In New York, home to the first successful union campaign, Amazon added 2,000 jobs between late 2021 and early 2023 (up 5% from 39,000 to 41,000).
- In Alabama, where there was another high-profile union effort, there was a net reduction of 2,000 jobs in the same period (down 22% from 9,000 to 7000).
The numbers do not reflect the subsequent 27,000 job cuts announced in Amazon’s corporate and technology workforce. As a result, Amazon’s HQ states, Washington and Virginia, were among 12 states with net gains in Amazon employees between late 2021 and early 2023.
- Washington state grew by 5,000 Amazon employees, or 6%, to 90,000 employees.
- Amazon’s Virginia employment climbed by 6,000 people, or 20%, to 36,000 employees.
The corporate and tech layoffs, which have been rolling out for the past few months, have had an outsized impact on Amazon’s employee base in Seattle and Arlington, Va. The next public glimpse of Amazon’s total workforce numbers will come when the company reports first-quarter earnings on April 27.
Amazon’s overall U.S. employment dropped by 98,000 people, about 9%, from late 2021 to early 2023, hovering above 1 million total at the start of 2023, after reaching 1.1 million in 2021.
Based on the new numbers, the company’s U.S. workforce now represents about 65% of its worldwide employment, which totaled 1.54 million as of the end of 2022.
By comparison, the ratio of U.S.-to-total employment was 72% as of the end of 2020, when Amazon employed 935,000 people in the United States, out of a global workforce of nearly 1.3 million at that time.
The biggest numerical decline between late 2021 and early 2023 was in New Jersey, where Amazon’s employment declined by 12,000 people, or 21%, from 58,000 to 46,000 employees.
The biggest percentage decline was a 100% drop in Montana, where Amazon now reports no employees. The company previously reported 30 employees in Montana.
After that, the biggest percentage decline was in Louisiana, where the company shed more than half (57%) of its previous 7,000-person workforce, shrinking to 3,000 people in the state as of this year.
See this PDF for the underlying data showing Amazon’s state-by-state employment changes from December 2021 to January 2023, as tracked by GeekWire from updates to the company’s Investing in the U.S. page.
