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Amazon posted third-quarter earnings that exceeded expectations, and strong cloud growth. Despite laying off 30,000 people recently, the company also announced plans to add hundreds of thousands of seasonal jobs this holiday season, including 150,000 in India. In its third quarter ended September, Amazon reported net sales of $180.2 billion, an increase of 13 per cent year-on-year compared with $158.9 billion in Q3 2024. The company’s operating income was $17.4 billion, unchanged from the third quarter of 2024. This operating income includes two special charges — $2.5 billion related to a legal settlement with the Federal Trade Commission and $1.8 billion in estimated severance costs primarily related to planned role eliminations. Amazon noted that without these charges, operating income would have been $21.7 billion. Operating income The AWS segment sales increased 20 per cent year-over-year to $33.0 billion. AWS segment operating income was $11.4 billion, compared with $10.4 billion in the third quarter of 2024. These results also include estimated severance costs primarily related to planned role eliminations. Andy Jassy, President and CEO, Amazon, said, “AWS is growing at a pace we haven’t seen since 2022, reaccelerating to 20.2 per cent y-o-y. We continue to see strong demand in AI and core infrastructure, and have been focused on accelerating capacity, adding more than 3.8 gigawatts in the past 12 months.” Addressing the company’s decision to lay off 30,000 employees globally, Jassy highlighted that the announcement was not financially or AI-driven, but culture-driven. “If you grow as fast as we did for several years, the size and types of businesses, the number of people, and the locations you’re in, you end up with more people and layers than before. When that happens, you can weaken the ownership of the people doing the actual work and who own most of the 2-way door decisions — the ones that should be made quickly and at the front line, it can lead to a slowdown. As a leadership team, we are committed to operating like the world’s largest start-up, which means removing layers and increasing the amount of ownership people have; it means inventing and moving quickly.” Flat structure He added that this is the first time in Amazon’s history, or in business overall, when it was more crucial to stay lean, maintain a flat structure, and move quickly amid the ongoing technological transformation. “That’s exactly what we’ll do,” Jassy said. The company also announced plans to add “hundreds of thousands of seasonal” jobs this holiday season, including 250,000 in the US, 150,000 in India, and thousands across Australia, Canada, France, Spain and Central Europe. This announcement comes on top of Amazon’s investment of over $233 million in India in 2025. This investment, announced in June this year, will focus on enhancing Amazon India’s operations infrastructure, improving associate safety and well-being programmes, and developing new tools and technology for its fulfilment network. This new investment builds on Amazon’s investments in creating an operations network that helps the company deliver to all serviceable pin-codes across India. Published on October 31, 2025
