Amazon Could Have Hired 600,000 US Workers By 2033 — Now It Reportedly Plans To Use Robots Instead
Amazon’s workforce has tripled in the United States since 2018, reaching nearly 1.2 million employees, reports The New York Times.
Now, the nation’s second-largest employer is accelerating automation, with plans to use robots in place of what would have been 600,000 workers hired by 2033, even though sales are projected to double by then.
According to The Times, interviews and leaked internal documents reveal that Amazon plans to automate 75% of its operations, potentially eliminating 160,000 jobs in the U.S. by 2027. Automation would save Amazon around 30 cents per item shipped, amounting to an estimated $12.6 billion in savings between 2025 and 2027.
At facilities designed for superfast deliveries, Amazon is trying to create warehouses that employ few humans at all.
In 2024, Amazon opened its most advanced robotic warehouse in Shreveport, La. — a model for future fulfillment centers, per The Times. After a package is sealed there, human hands rarely touch it again.
The outlet notes that the facility currently runs with 1,000 robots, which allowed Amazon to employ 25% fewer workers last year than it would have without automation. As more robots come online next year, the site is expected to employ half as many workers as without robotic assistance.
“With this major milestone now in sight, we are confident in our ability to flatten Amazon’s hiring curve over the next 10 years,” the robotics team wrote in its 2025 strategy plan, The Times reported.
By the end of 2027, Amazon plans to replicate its Shreveport design in about 40 facilities, starting with a massive warehouse in Virginia Beach, VA.
The road to automation has sparked concern about its disproportionate impact on communities of color, as Amazon’s workers are nearly three times more likely to be Black than the average U.S. worker, per The Times.
To address potential backlash in communities facing job losses, Amazon has started developing a strategy to position itself as a “good corporate citizen.” Documents reportedly show that the company is exploring ideas such as boosting participation in community events and carefully rebranding its language — swapping “automation” and “A.I.” for terms like “advanced technology,” and using “cobot” (collaborative robot) instead of “robot.”
Amazon denied claims that it directs executives to avoid specific terms and said community involvement is unrelated to automation.
In a statement to The Verge, Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said the leaked documents represent the views of one group — not the company’s overall hiring strategy.
“Leaked documents often paint an incomplete and misleading picture of our plans, and that’s the case here. In our written narrative culture, thousands of documents circulate throughout the company at any given time, each with varying degrees of accuracy and timeliness,” Nantel said, per The Verge.
“We’re actively hiring at operations facilities across the country and recently announced plans to fill 250,000 positions for the holiday season,” Nantel continued.
Daron Acemoglu, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology automation professor and 2024 Nobel Prize winner in economic science, warned that if Amazon’s automation plans succeed, “one of the biggest employers in the United States will become a net job destroyer, not a net job creator,” The Times reported.
