Amazon cuts 2,300 WA jobs. Eastern WA isn’t completely spared
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- Amazon will cut about 2,300 Washington management jobs starting Jan–May 2026.
- Layoffs focus on Puget Sound but include small cuts in Tri‑Cities and Spokane.
- Amazon listed specific role cuts and 90 remote positions in its WARN filing.
Amazon Inc., the Tri-Cities’ fastest-growing employer, is shrinking its Washington workforce by more than 2,300 management-level employees starting in early 2026.
The layoffs are largely confined to Amazon facilities in the Puget Sound area, but Eastern Washington is not completely spared.
Amazon will lay off a small number of workers in the Tri-Cities and Spokane areas, according to a notice filed with Washington state under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN).
Amazon listed “approximately 1” employee at its massive receiving warehouse, known as PSC2, on South Road 40 East near Sacajawea State Park in east Pasco.
It also said it will lay off two employees at its Garfield Avenue facility in Spokane Valley and one at its Hayford Road facility in Spokane.
Another 90 remote workers will be affected. Their locations were not given.
The layoffs take effect in stages between Jan. 26 and May 26, 2026, according to the notice.
Amazon said the layoffs are expected to be permanent and do not affect any employees in unions or affected by collective bargaining. Laid off employees do not have “bumping rights” to displace other workers based on seniority or other factors.
The layoffs generally involve management-level workers. Amazon’s WARN letter included 24 pages of job titles covering a wide variety of management functions: human resources, recruiting, software development, engineering, science, business analysis and data science.
The cuts in Washington are part of a larger global move to eliminate about 14,000 jobs worldwide, according to The Seattle Times and other news reports.
Amazon in the Tri-Cities
Amazon made a significant splash in the Tri-Cities, first by building two warehouses in east Pasco, each with more than one million square feet.
Only one opened – but not for its original purpose.
The warehouse at 1351 S. Road 40 East opened in 2024 as an “inbound cross dock,” where the company receives incoming merchandise from suppliers, sorts it and ships it off it to regional distribution centers around the country.
The facility, a sort of airport for merchandise, employs more than 1,600.
A similar building across the street remains unused.
The company also added an 88,000-square-foot delivery station at 3700 N. Capitol Ave. in North Pasco to enable last-mile deliveries in the Tri-Cities.
More recently, Amazon entered a partnership with Energy Northwest that gives it the right to the first 320 megawatts that will be produced when Washington’s first small modular nuclear power reactors are developed near the agency’s Columbia Generating Station north of Richland.
The project, named Cascade Advanced Energy Facility, will be built, owned and operated by Energy Northwest using X-Energy’s advanced nuclear reactor design.
Amazon is paying for the initial feasibility study and is claiming the output of the first four 80 megawatt reactors, out of 12 planned.
In 2024, Amazon claimed it had invested nearly $256 billion in Washington since 2010 leading to 90,000 direct jobs.
This story was originally published October 29, 2025 at 12:05 PM.