PwC and Amazon have both announced significant job reductions, underscoring a shift in how major employers are aligning headcount with artificial intelligence investment and slower revenue growth.
PwC confirmed it reduced its global workforce by around 5,600 people in the year to 30 June 2025, bringing total staff numbers below 365,000. The professional services network has also abandoned its previous plan to add 100,000 employees by 2026, citing a focus on upskilling and productivity through a US $1.5 billion AI programme.
The cuts coincide with PwC’s full-year results, which showed revenue up 2.7 per cent to US $57 billion — the slowest growth among the Big Four accounting groups. The firm said the slowdown reflects weaker demand in consulting and assurance, particularly in North America and China, and ongoing reputational challenges in Australia.
Global chair Mohamed Kande said the investment drive remains central to PwC’s strategy. “We continue to hit our investment targets, and we continue to hire,” he said. “We have rolled out AI tools and upskilled over 315,000 in AI, which is boosting the productivity of our people.”
Amazon’s announcement followed hours later. The company said it will eliminate approximately 14,000 corporate roles worldwide — around 4 per cent of its office workforce — as part of what it described as a “multi-year simplification and AI acceleration effort.”
Beth Galetti, senior vice-president of People Experience and Technology, told employees that the changes were designed to “reduce bureaucracy, remove layers, and shift resources toward our biggest bets and what matters most to customers.”
The cuts affect several business divisions, including Devices, Advertising, Prime Video, Human Resources and Amazon Web Services. Most affected employees will be offered 90 days to explore internal transfers, along with severance and outplacement support.
For both organisations, the timing and rationale point to a deeper structural realignment. PwC’s retrenchment reflects a pivot from global expansion to capability optimisation — an emphasis on AI-enabled productivity rather than hiring volume. Amazon’s approach centres on slimming down the corporate layer built during its pandemic-era expansion, while redeploying investment into automation, robotics, and generative AI.
Analysts note that the parallel announcements suggest a shared corporate logic. Major employers are increasingly viewing workforce reduction not purely as cost-cutting, but as repositioning around technologies that promise long-term efficiency gains. In each case, AI investment is being used to justify both the contraction of existing roles and the creation of new, higher-value technical positions.
The broader labour-market context is also changing. In the US, job openings in professional services and technology have cooled from their post-pandemic peaks, while automation initiatives are accelerating across sectors. PwC and Amazon’s decisions may therefore mark the beginning of a new employment cycle — one defined less by headcount growth and more by continuous digital reskilling.
Both companies maintain that the reductions are strategic rather than reactive. Yet the symmetry of their announcements has drawn attention across boardrooms and policy circles alike. As corporate AI spending accelerates, the emerging question is not whether jobs will return, but how quickly work itself will be redefined.
Have “enhancing productivity” and “unlocking innovation” with AI become euphemisms for workforce cuts and budget control? We explore the touchy topic in this piece on Business Quarter Executive.
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