Amazon cut over 30,000 jobs. Now recruiters want former staff back for AI.
Quartz reported on 23 September 2026, citing recruiter emails obtained by Business Insider, that Amazon is contacting former employees about open jobs in AI and cloud computing, computing power Amazon rents out over the internet.
Some of those employees were laid off.
One message came from a recruiter in Amazon's AI agent group, asking former staff with AI and machine learning experience to apply.
In another case, a recruiter in the finance team of AWS, Amazon's cloud business, offered a former employee a faster interview process. It led to an offer. The recruiter also asked whether return-to-office rules had played a part in the employee leaving. "A lot has changed since you were here, and there's some really compelling work happening across AI/ML right now," one of the emails read.
Amazon says the practice is long-standing. A spokesperson told Business Insider that former employees are rehired across the company, laid-off people may be considered and outreach follows open roles. Office attendance rules have not changed, she said.
Amazon cut more than 30,000 roles in several rounds over the past year. Payroll data from ADP, a US payroll company, showed returning workers made up 35% of US new hires in March 2025 and nearly two thirds in tech.
If a specialist you laid off comes back a year later, what did the layoff actually save?
Image: AI-generated.
Sources
Our file on Amazon
- 4 Oct
Amazon pledged $1 billion to data-centre towns. Over 100 local bans are being weighed.
- 23 Sept
A Texas woman counted 52 Amazon drones overhead in one day.
- 22 Sept
Amazon blocked Meta's AI assistant from buying on Amazon. It launched 12 days earlier.
- 21 Sept
Amazon's shopping bot may bury US-made goods, two senators told the FTC.
Every story here is open to read. The ERP LEADERS brief goes one step further.
The week in enterprise software, in one email: the stories that mattered, the failures with their figures, one case taken apart. Read a sample or sign up for the brief.
Welcome back. · Issue 01
