How Many People Work for Amazon? 1,595,000 in 2026

Amazon had 1,595,000 employees at the end of June 2026

Amazon’s second-quarter 2026 results, released July 30, 2026, put its workforce at 1,595,000 on June 30. That is 49,000 more people than a year before, a 3.2% rise by our arithmetic, and the most on the payroll at any quarter end since early 2022. On December 31, 2025, the figure stood at 1,576,000.

The number sits in the supplemental table of every quarterly release under the same label: “full-time and part-time; excludes contractors & temporary personnel.” It is one worldwide total with no split by country or job type. Drivers hired by Amazon’s delivery partners sit outside it too.

What Amazon’s employee count includes and leaves out

The quarterly figure is a payroll count. Anyone Amazon pays directly as a full-time or part-time employee is in it, in any country and any role, from software engineers to fulfillment center associates. Anyone doing Amazon’s work through another employer, or as an independent contractor, is not.

Group	Who employs them	Inside the 1,595,000?	Latest figure
Amazon employees, full-time or part-time	Amazon	Yes	1,595,000 (June 2026)
Holiday hires in US fulfillment and transportation	Amazon	No December jump shows	250,000 positions (2025 season)
Delivery Service Partner drivers	Independent delivery businesses, started by 4,400 entrepreneurs	No	390,000 driving jobs
Contractors and temporary personnel	Outside Amazon’s payroll	No, excluded by definition	Not published

The gap between the payroll and the people working on Amazon’s packages is largest in delivery and at peak season. The 390,000 partner driving jobs alone would add 24% to the headcount if they were counted.

Amazon employees by year and quarter, 2021 to 2026

Amazon closed 2021 with 1,608,000 employees, 24% more than a year earlier. Headcount then fell for 2 years, to 1,541,000 at the end of 2022 and 1,525,000 at the end of 2023. Growth came back in 2024, when the count reached 1,556,000, and in 2025, at 1,576,000. In June 2026 it was still 13,000 below the 2021 year end.

Amazon employees at year end, with the latest quarter

• 20211,608,000
• 20221,541,000
• 20231,525,000
• 20241,556,000
• 20251,576,000
• June 20261,595,000

Source: Amazon quarterly results, supplemental tables (Q4 2022, Q4 2024 and Q2 2026 releases)

The quarterly figures show the real peak came after that year end. Headcount was 30% above a year earlier in September 2021, and on March 31, 2022, it reached 1,622,000, 28% up on a year before, according to the fourth-quarter 2022 release. By June 2022 it had dropped to 1,523,000, a loss of 99,000 people in 1 quarter. The low point came in the first half of 2023: the fourth-quarter 2024 release shows the March and June 2024 counts at 4% and 5% above the same dates in 2023.

Quarter end	Employees	Change on prior quarter	Change on a year earlier
September 30, 2024	1,551,000	+19,000	+3%
December 31, 2024	1,556,000	+5,000	+2%
March 31, 2025	1,560,000	+4,000	+3%
June 30, 2025	1,546,000	-14,000	+1%
September 30, 2025	1,578,000	+32,000	+2%
December 31, 2025	1,576,000	-2,000	+1%
March 31, 2026	1,575,000	-1,000	+1%
June 30, 2026	1,595,000	+20,000	+3%

Over these 8 quarters the count has moved inside a band of 49,000 people, about 3% of the total. The largest quarterly gain, 32,000, came in the September 2025 quarter, and growth on a year earlier never went above 3%.

Corporate job cuts in October 2025 and January 2026

In October 2025, Beth Galetti, Amazon’s senior vice president of People Experience and Technology, told staff the company would reduce its corporate workforce by about 14,000 roles. A second message in January 2026 cut about 16,000 more roles. The 2 rounds total 30,000, or 1.9% of the 1,578,000 people Amazon employed at the end of September 2025, and in both rounds most affected staff were given 90 days to look for another job inside the company.

The cuts barely register in the total. Headcount went from 1,578,000 in September 2025 to 1,575,000 in March 2026, a net fall of 3,000, then rose 20,000 in the second quarter. The October message said Amazon would keep hiring in key strategic areas while removing layers.

Amazon delivery drivers at Delivery Service Partners

Amazon started its Delivery Service Partner program in 2018. Independent companies run delivery routes for Amazon, and the DSP program page says these businesses hire and manage their own employees, so the drivers are on the partner’s payroll rather than Amazon’s.

Amazon puts the program at 4,400 entrepreneurs, 390,000 driving jobs and 19 countries, and says its partners deliver more than 20 million Amazon packages every day. Because the drivers sit with the partners, a tight market for drivers reaches Amazon through what it pays its delivery partners rather than through its own headcount.

Amazon robots and output per employee

Amazon’s robotics announcement says it has deployed more than 1 million robots, and that the 1 millionth was delivered to a fulfillment center in Japan. The fleet works in more than 300 of Amazon’s facilities worldwide, and a generative AI model Amazon calls DeepFleet improved the fleet’s travel time by 10%. Set against 1,595,000 employees in June 2026, that is more than 1 robot for every 2 people.

The same announcement says more than 700,000 employees have gone through Amazon’s upskilling programs since 2019, and that its robotics-heavy site in Shreveport, Louisiana, needs 30% more employees in reliability, maintenance and engineering roles. The second-quarter 2026 release adds a new version of Proteus, an autonomous robot that moves loads of up to 1,300 pounds around fulfillment centers.

The quarterly accounts show how far workload has outrun headcount. In the second quarter of 2026, sales and costs rose 4 to 6 times faster than the number of people.

Measure, second quarter	2025	2026	Change
Employees at quarter end	1,546,000	1,595,000	+3.2%
Net sales	$167.7 billion	$200.6 billion	+19.6%
North America and International segment sales	$136.8 billion	$158.4 billion	+15.7%
Fulfillment expense	$26.0 billion	$29.6 billion	+14.1%
Worldwide shipping costs	$23.4 billion	$27.9 billion	+19.3%
Net sales per employee	$108,500	$125,800	+15.9%

North America and International hold Amazon’s stores business, and their sales grew 15.7% with a workforce only 3.2% larger, so each employee, on average, is handling more of Amazon’s order volume than a year before. The per-employee figure is our division of net sales, which include AWS, by the quarter-end headcount.

Amazon warehouse pay and holiday hiring

For the 2025 holidays Amazon set out to hire 250,000 people for full-time, part-time and seasonal positions across its US fulfillment and transportation network. It said regular staff in those roles average $23 an hour and seasonal workers over $19, and that more than $1 billion in added pay and benefits lifted average total compensation, benefits included, above $30 an hour. Employees with 3 years of service had seen their pay rise 18% on average.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics measures the whole industry. Its Current Employment Statistics put average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory employees in warehousing and storage at $24.90 in September 2025 and $25.74 in August 2026, 3.6% more than a year earlier. Production workers at couriers and messengers averaged $24.22 in September 2025.

Average hourly pay, US warehouse and delivery work, 2025

• Amazon seasonal hires, average$19+
• Amazon regular fulfillment and transportation staff, average$23
• Couriers and messengers, September (BLS)$24.22
• Warehousing and storage, September (BLS)$24.90
• All private industries, September (BLS)$31.56

Source: Amazon 2025 holiday hiring announcement; BLS Current Employment Statistics, production and nonsupervisory employees, seasonally adjusted

Warehouse jobs are shrinking while pay rises. BLS counted 1,831,800 warehousing and storage jobs in September 2026, a preliminary figure, which is 21,600 fewer than a year earlier and 49,400 below January 2025. Amazon’s 2025 holiday target on its own equaled 13.5% of the 1,853,400 warehousing and storage jobs BLS counted in September 2025.

What Amazon’s workforce means for brands buying fulfillment

A 3PL’s receiving, pick and pack fees are largely warehouse labor, and that labor costs more every year. Warehouse production pay rose 3.6% in the 12 months to August 2026 while warehouse employment fell 1.2% in the year to September, so a renewal quote with fees up 3% to 4% is tracking wages. A rise of 10% needs a reason you can check, such as a move to a new building, a higher monthly minimum or services you added.

Amazon is also the employer a 3PL bids against when it hires. A warehouse in a town with an Amazon fulfillment center has to come close to Amazon’s $23 average to keep its crew, and each fall it recruits alongside a 250,000-person holiday drive. Expect that competition in the 3PL’s peak pricing: ask in August for its peak surcharge per order, its seasonal staffing plan and the last date it will receive holiday stock, then book inbound so inventory is on the shelf before that date.

Automation changes what that labor buys. Amazon grew its headcount 3.2% in the year to June 2026 while sales grew 19.6%, with more than 1 million robots on the floor. A 3PL that has put in goods-to-person robots or automated packing lines should be able to show the gain in a lower per-unit pick fee or a later same-day order cutoff. If neither moves, the savings from its robots are staying with the 3PL.

Headlines about Amazon job cuts say little about its fulfillment capacity. The 30,000 roles cut in October 2025 and January 2026 were framed as corporate reductions, and total headcount still rose 49,000 in the year to June 2026. A seller deciding between Amazon’s network and a 3PL learns more from the receiving times and storage fees Amazon quotes it than from news about Amazon’s offices.