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Fortune
Fortune
Eva Roytburg

Everyone thinks AI is replacing factory workers, but Amazon’s layoffs show it’s coming for middle management first

Large group of displeased business people carrying carton boxed with their belongings after being fired from their jobs. Focus is on senior woman. (Credit: skynesher—Getty Images)

Just as news outlets shared leaked Amazon documents suggesting the company could replace half a million warehouse jobs with robots, the e-commerce giant pulled the rug out and laid off 14,000 middle managers instead.

The move may offer an early glimpse of how AI is actually reshaping the labor force: not by immediately displacing the tactile, mundane factory roles everyone expected, but by hollowing out the white-collar ranks that run them.

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