Amazon plans to replace 600,000 workers with a robot army — and automation could run 75% of its operations by 2033
Leading hook: Amazon plans to replace 600,000 workers with a robot army — and the move could automate 75% of its operations by 2033. The latest leaks and interviews, reported by The New York Times, reveal a strategy that prioritizes machines over people. Amazon says automation will boost productivity, and paradoxically, create higher‑paying jobs. Some workers welcome the relief from repetitive, backbreaking tasks. But the new numbers suggest a broader, jolting truth about the future of work at one of America's largest employers.
In This Article:
The automation drive behind the numbers
Amazon has spent years automating its warehouses. Its mechanical workforce is already more than a million strong, rivaling the size of its human workforce at roughly 1.56 million people. Robots are on track to outnumber the humans who staff Amazon's warehouses. The company says automation will raise productivity and efficiency, while creating more high‑paying jobs. Some workers praise the robot helpers for taking over repetitive tasks that wear them down.
What the leaks reveal: 600,000 jobs at risk, 75% automated
Interviews and leaked documents reveal a plan to replace more than 600,000 jobs with robots, The New York Times reports. By the end, Amazon’s robotics team aims to automate 75 percent of the company’s entire operations. The calculus behind this move suggests it could save about 30 cents per item processed and delivered. Shreveport, Louisiana, is a testing ground where a thousand robots swarm the warehouse. "Once an item there is in a package," the NYT notes, a "human barely touches it again." Documents show that the site reduced its human workforce by roughly 25 percent last year thanks to automation. "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 playbook and the spin: how they plan to reach it
Leaked plans also show how Amazon plans to manage the public narrative. The documents suggest avoiding terms like "automation" and "AI" when describing robotics, instead using "advanced technology" and "cobot" to imply collaboration between humans and machines. Concrete steps include expanding automation to 40 facilities using Shreveport’s model by 2027, and reducing the Stone Mountain center's workforce by as many as 1,200 employees. The company aims to slow overall hiring while still planning a surge during peak seasons, advertising 250,000 holiday hires—though it does not clarify how many will be permanent. To polish its image, the company even weighed participating in community events like parades and Toys for Tots, signaling a softer corporate footprint amid the automation push.
What this means for workers and society: a warning and a test for the era of AI
MIT economist and Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu warns that if Amazon proceeds, "one of the biggest employers in the United States will become a net job destroyer, not a net job creator." He is blunt: "Nobody else has the same incentive as Amazon to find the way to automate. Once they work out how to do this profitably, it will spread to others, too." As the second-largest private employer in the United States, Amazon's automation plan could set a precedent that reshapes both knowledge work and manual labor. This is more than a warehouse story—it’s a test of how society balances efficiency, livelihoods, and the future of work in the AI era.
