Robot revolution: How Amazon is planning on replacing over 600,000 jobs with automated workers

To quote a particular Canadian rapper: if you’re reading this, it’s too late. The robots are already here, and they’re plugged in and ready to take your job.

Over the past several years, Amazon has quietly ramped up robotic automation inside its fulfilment centres, and recent documents found by the prying eyes of the media revealed that the tech overhaul may reshape its workforce far more than they let on publicly. Although Amazon already deploys over a million robots, its ambitions appear much larger.

According to internal strategy papers seen by media outlets, Amazon’s robotics division set a target of automating around 75 per cent of the company’s operations in the United States.

The mathematics behind that scarily large number suggest that by 2033 the company may avoid hiring more than 600,000 workers it would otherwise need, despite projecting a doubling of product volume in that time.

Here’s one example: at a warehouse in Louisiana, about 1,000 robots already operate and, according to the documents, staff numbers last year were around 25 per cent lower than would have been the case without the robot revolution.

Amazon plans to roll this model out in approximately 40 facilities by the end of 2027. Futurism notes that the robotics team wrote: “with this major milestone now in sight, we are confident in our ability to flatten Amazon’s hiring curve over the next 10 years.”

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On the staff side, Amazon emphasises the benefit of shifting humans away from repetitive, physically demanding tasks toward more technical roles like robot maintenance. At the same time, the leaked documents indicate the company is already preparing its public narrative for a potential backlash. Masking tape in the form of terms such as “advanced technology” or “cobot” replace words like “automation” and “AI” in internal briefs, while community goodwill efforts are also mentioned as part of managing the optics of the worrying situation.

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