It isn’t just Amazon. There’s a growing belief that having too many employees will slow a company down—and that anyone still on the payroll could be working harder.
By Chip Cutter and Lauren Weber. Excerpts:
"U.S. public companies have reduced their white-collar workforces by a collective 3.5% over the past three years"
"Over the past decade, one in five companies in the S&P 500 have shrunk."
"New technologies like generative artificial intelligence are allowing companies to do more with less."
"there’s a growing belief that having too many employees is itself an impediment."
"Anyone still on the payroll could be working harder."
"the workforce cuts in recent years coincide with a surge in sales and profits"
"about one in five S&P 500 companies have fewer employees today in both offices and the field than a decade ago"
"The downsizing has caused employees to rapidly lose the leverage they enjoyed during the pandemic, when jobs were plentiful and companies were bidding up for white-collar talent."
"workers are contending with bigger workloads, more responsibilities"
"Managers have been an especially ripe target for cutting"
"The number of managers dropped 6.1% between May 2022 to May 2025. Executive-level roles fell 4.6%."
"When Lattice wanted to add a payroll function to its line of HR software products, executives calculated they would need 40 or 50 new staff since customers’ pay issues often require immediate attention."
"Ultimately, Lattice added fewer than 10 people, CEO Sarah Franklin said, because current AI models are so much more sophisticated than chatbots from just a year or two ago. They “can take bespoke requests, bespoke querying and match them to give you an answer,” she said. “That’s what we as humans do.”"
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