500,000 Amazon jobs on chopping block due to automation in next few years

Tom Hall

Workers unload pallets with tote from truck trailers at Amazon OXR1 fulfillment center in Oxnard, California, on Wednesday, August 21, 2024. [AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes]

Amazon is planning to use advances in automation to replace half a million jobs in the next several years, according to internal documents acquired by the New York Times. This represents nearly half of Amazon’s current workforce in the United States, around 1.1 million people.

The move marks an accelerating jobs bloodbath, with rapid advances in automation and artificial intelligence being weaponized to eliminate entire sections of the workforce. The impact is not confined to lower-wage, blue-collar jobs, but also includes office employees. The company already cut 27,000 jobs in 2022 and 2023 and recently announced another 1,500 global job cuts in its human resources division.

The potential impact is stark. According to the Times, Amazon’s ultimate goal is to automate 75 percent of its operations. “Amazon is so convinced this automated future is around the corner that it has started developing plans to mitigate the fallout in communities that may lose jobs,” the paper reports. In other words, the company is engaging in public relations damage control by throwing a few dollars at “community events such as parades and Toys for Tots.”

An experimental facility in Shreveport, Louisiana, provides a glimpse of what is to come. “Once an item there is in a package, a human barely touches it again. The company uses a thousand robots in Shreveport, allowing it to employ a quarter fewer workers last year than it would have without automation, documents show.” The Times continues: “Next year, as more robots are introduced, it expects to employ about half as many workers there as it would without automation.”

The pace of this transformation is extremely rapid. “Amazon plans to copy the Shreveport design in about 40 facilities by the end of 2027, starting with a massive warehouse that just opened in Virginia Beach.” By 2033, even though the company expects to sell twice as many products, automation will lead to 600,000 fewer hirings than would otherwise have been needed.

Amazon has long been the poster child for low-wage, high-tech exploitation. Its distribution centers were among the first to use robotics and electronic tracking to force workers to “make rate.” Many workers who have spoken with the World Socialist Web Site in recent years have described being injured on the job and then denied workers’ compensation.

These methods have helped Amazon grow massively to become the second-largest employer in the United States, after Walmart. The new wave of cuts will devastate communities where the company’s distribution centers have become a primary source of employment, especially in deindustrialized towns where Amazon has moved in to take advantage of a desperate job market. According to the company, 40 percent of its warehouse workforce is located in small towns, defined as having fewer than 50,000 people.

Amazon’s methods have been widely adopted throughout corporate America. The use of such technologies is referred to in boardrooms as “Amazonization.”

A similar overhaul is already underway among its competitors in the logistics sector. Last year, UPS rolled out its “Network of the Future” program, using automation to eliminate up to 80 percent of warehouse labor at 200 facilities. This began only months after the ratification of a new contract with the Teamsters, whose bureaucrats remained totally silent on the danger. Since then, they have hardly even mentioned the program, despite thousands of layoffs already underway.

UPS had earlier announced it would lay off 20,000 and shutter 73 facilities in the first half of 2025 alone.

A comparable initiative is the “Delivering for America” program by the US Postal Service, which is consolidating operations into a small number of highly automated distribution hubs. Similar programs are being pushed through by postal systems across the world.

The scale and speed of automation’s impact are staggering. Ford CEO Jim Farley recently declared that AI will “replace literally half of all white-collar workers.”

The World Economic Forum estimates that about 92 million jobs worldwide will be displaced by emerging technologies by 2030. Goldman Sachs projects that 300 million full-time jobs could be exposed to automation, and the McKinsey Global Institute predicts that 30 percent of US job hours could be automated by the end of the decade. The International Monetary Fund warns that one of the biggest impacts will be a massive increase in inequality, both within societies and between rich and poor countries, with the latter less able to adopt new technologies.

The question is not the technology itself, but who controls it. Under a rational and humane social system, automation could be used to vastly improve access to necessary goods, shorten the working day with no loss in pay, and fund pensions, healthcare and other social needs.

But under capitalism, it is being used as an instrument of class warfare on a vast scale. These new technologies are being deployed to intensify exploitation in anticipation of another global recession and new economic crises caused, in the final analysis, by the massive and uncontrolled growth of financial speculation. Ever greater sources of surplus value are being drawn from the working class to keep financial bubbles from bursting.

Artificial intelligence itself has become a major financial bubble, with “circular deals” such as those between Nvidia and ChatGPT worth billions of dollars. Projected investments in computing power are expected to reach $720 billion by the end of the decade. New power plants are being built from scratch to serve individual data facilities, each consuming as much electricity as small cities.

The inevitability of financial collapse is so great that Jeff Bezos recently penned a commentary claiming that bubbles are “good.” The costs, inevitably, are borne by the working class through mass unemployment and deteriorating working conditions. This year has already seen a series of explosions and other accidents at industrial plants caused by overwork, neglect, and unsafe conditions.

AI and automation are also being harnessed to ramp up military production in preparation for war with China, plans that have been in development for years. Tariffs are being used to redirect supply chains away from the South China Sea to prepare for such a conflict.

No other company personifies the character of the United States as a corporate oligarchy more than Amazon and its chairman, Jeff Bezos, currently the world’s fourth-richest person with a net “worth” of $234 billion, according to Forbes. Through Amazon, Bezos exercises personal control over vast and crucial sections of the economy. Through his ownership of the Washington Post, whose opinion page was purged this year under his direction, he promotes reactionary calls for massive austerity and imperialist wars across the globe.

Bezos also maintains a personal relationship with Trump. He is among the tech billionaires contributing to the $300 million demolition of the White House’s East Wing and the building of a massive, gilded ballroom. A representative of Bezos attended an event with Trump in the under-construction ballroom, where Trump celebrated their wealth. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman gushed: “Thank you for being such a pro-business, pro-innovation president. It’s a very refreshing change.”

This alliance underscores that the fascist dictatorship which Trump is attempting to build is in defense of the corporate oligarchy. Trump has slashed upwards of 300,000 federal workers and furloughed the government workforce for three weeks during the recent shutdown. Many federal employees are now lining up at food banks.

The levels of inequality and social misery now being produced are incompatible with democracy. The rational use of technology is impossible under the capitalist system of private ownership. It requires the expropriation of Amazon and other major corporations and their transformation into democratically controlled public utilities, run by the working class in the interests of society as a whole. Bezos and the other oligarchs must be expropriated, not only to make trillions available for social spending but also to remove the primary constituency for fascism.

Class divide in US life expectancy reaches 9 years for elderly

Benjamin Mateus

A nurse holds a phone while a COVID-19 patient speaks with his family from the intensive care unit at the Joseph Imbert Hospital Center in Arles, southern France, Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2020. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)

American life expectancy has stagnated since 2010 after decades of steady progress. While recent research has characterized this trend as a “double jeopardy” affecting both working-age adults and retirees, mortality at retirement ages has proven more consequential to the nation’s life expectancy crisis than trends among younger populations.

This failure of longevity gains for older Americans stems directly from the nation’s extreme economic inequality. Overwhelming evidence demonstrates that wealth has become the single most powerful predictor of survival.

A 2025 analysis by the National Council on Aging (NCOA) and the Leading Age LTSS Center, titled “Low-Income Older Adults Die 9 Years Earlier than Those with Greatest Wealth,” quantifies these lethal consequences. Drawing on Health and Retirement Study data from 2018 to 2022, the report found that low-income older adults die on average nine years earlier than their wealthiest peers. Older adults earning $20,000 or less annually had mortality rates nearly double those earning $120,000 or more.

Figure 1 Real and counterfactual life expectancies at age 25, 2000 to 2019 [Photo: LeadingAge LTSS Center @ UMass Boston]

“It is shocking and unacceptable that in the United States in 2025, poverty steals almost a decade of older Americans’ lives,” said Ramsey Alwin, president of the National Council on Aging.

The study documents a graded mortality risk tied directly to wealth. Older adults in the lowest 60 percent income group—those earning below $60,000—had mortality rates of 17.6 to 21 percent, nearly double the 10.5 to 11 percent rate among the top 20 percent of earners. The bottom 20 percent faced a 21 percent mortality rate and died nine years earlier than the wealthiest decile.

The analysis captured the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, during which the wealthiest 20 percent saw substantial asset gains while most older households experienced minimal financial advancement. The pandemic continues to exact a devastating toll, with tens of thousands of deaths annually in the United States alone and ongoing global transmission. In the US alone, there were over 1 million excess deaths in the first two years of the pandemic, part of an estimated 14.9 million to 18.2 million globally. The pandemic’s health consequences extend far beyond acute illness, with Long COVID currently afflicting 7.2 percent of US adults. Pandemic deaths have concentrated heavily among lower-wealth populations.

The longevity gap in the US fundamentally stems from structural financial insecurity affecting most older Americans. The report shows that 80 percent of older households—approximately 34 million—cannot withstand major financial shocks, such as widowhood, serious illness or the cost of long-term care.

Over 19 million older households, representing 45 percent of the total, live below the Elder Index, a measure calculating the actual cost of living for older adults. These households lack income to cover basic necessities. Though not classified as poor by federal standards, this financial instability produces lethal health consequences.

Unable to afford preventive care, medications and treatment, these older adults defer medical attention. Sustained financial stress inflicts chronic physiological harm. The conclusion is unavoidable that under capitalism elderly people without wealth are treated as having little social value.

Furthermore, the wealth divide continues widening. Throughout the pandemic, vulnerable populations have seen no recovery. These outcomes reflect policy choices prioritizing profits over human life, as capitalism treats longevity not as a universal right but as a function of wealth accumulation.

This divergence in longevity is not new among retirees but represents the culmination of a half-century of deepening economic stratification. While overall US mortality rates declined between 1969 and 2010, progress stalled after the 2008 financial crisis, leading to a dramatic slowdown in life expectancy gains that contrasts sharply with peer nations.

Economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton have used education as a proxy for socioeconomic position, documenting how the four-year college degree has become the defining line between “two Americas” in terms of survival. Since 1992, the mortality gap between adults with and without a bachelor’s degree has widened consistently.

Progress for the non-college-educated majority—approximately two-thirds of the adult population—stalled and reversed after 2010, while the educated elite continued seeing longevity gains, though at a slower pace. By 2021, this gap reached a devastating 8.5-year difference in adult life expectancy.

Multiple factors drive this divergence, concentrated overwhelmingly among the less educated. “Deaths of despair,” especially suicide, drug overdose and alcoholic liver disease, are rising sharply. Meanwhile, mortality improvements for cardiovascular disease and cancer have decelerated, with gains benefiting the college-educated far more.

This widening educational gap manifests wealth inequality that has intensified since the 1980s. Research confirms that wealth predicts survival more powerfully than income or education, allowing families to buffer financial shocks. The deterioration of labor markets for less-educated workers, falling real wages and the destruction of dignified work have stripped the working class of social structures necessary for successful lives, fostering environments conducive to self-destruction.

As the gap in real family income and wealth expanded—with college graduates now owning three-quarters of all wealth compared to equal holdings in 1990—the mortality gap followed.

The nine-year mortality gap separating rich and poor retirees is sustained by a deeply flawed US healthcare system optimized for profit rather than population health. Despite spending $4.9 trillion annually—$14,570 per person in 2023, the United States achieves the worst health outcomes, including the lowest life expectancy, among peer high-income nations.

This massive outlay far exceeds the 7.5 percent of GDP threshold beyond which additional spending yields diminishing or negative returns. The structural inefficiency manifests as colossal waste and fraud, estimated at $760 billion to $935 billion annually, or approximately 25 percent of all healthcare expenditures.

The largest source of waste is administrative complexity, consuming $265.6 billion per year—five times higher than peer nations with less fragmented systems. These hundreds of billions serve primarily to manage market competition, verify insurance and maintain complex billing infrastructure that rations care and extracts private profit.

This staggering waste stands in sharp relief against paltry prevention resources. Public health receives less than 3 percent of total healthcare spending, despite chronic diseases—which are largely preventable—driving 90 percent of the nation’s annual health costs.

Investments in public health and prevention demonstrate extraordinary cost effectiveness. Studies consistently show a median return on investment exceeding 14 to 1 for public health interventions. Investing just $10 per person annually in community-based prevention could save more than $16 billion over five years. In some contexts, local public health spending yields $67 to $88 of societal benefit for every dollar invested.

If even a fraction of the $265 billion wasted on administrative overhead were redirected to prevention, the societal benefits could reach hundreds of billions annually, drastically improving population health and reducing total costs.

The persistence of this catastrophic misallocation reflects capitalism’s inability to prioritize collective welfare. Public health provides public goods—clean air, sanitation, prevention—while medicine provides private goods that generate gratitude and political credit. Political and economic mechanisms systematically oppose prevention. Benefits lie far in the future, beyond electoral terms, and save “statistical lives” rather than identifiable patients.

Powerful industries, including the pharmaceutical and insurance monopolies, actively oppose cost-effective prevention while promoting costly medical care. Treating health as a commodity translates directly into policy choices that tolerate avoidable suffering and premature death for the poor.

The nine-year mortality gap between wealthy and poor older adults expresses structural social inequality entrenched by capitalism. This failure extends beyond the United States. Austerity policies adopted across high-income countries following the 2008 financial crisis systematically increased death rates and slowed mortality improvements.

Research consistently demonstrates that governmental austerity harms all-cause mortality, life expectancy and specific causes of death. Privatization, deregulation and reduced public spending produce worse collective health outcomes and greater inequality, creating tiered systems where access to quality care and survival depend on socioeconomic status.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has functioned as a stress test, disproportionately killing the poor while calculations reveal the resulting excess deaths have saved federal entitlement programs like Social Security hundreds of billions of dollars. This exposes the inherent financial logic of social murder within the capitalist system.

The necessity of a revolutionary perspective is confirmed by the data in these studies. Meaningful social equality in all aspects of life requires a fundamental economic transformation to a socialist system that prioritizes human needs and social well-being over the fatal imperatives of profit accumulation.

New coronavirus wave: “Frankenstein” variant spreading rapidly

Kevin Jordan & Marianne Arens

Largely ignored by governments and trade unions, a new SARS-CoV-2 variant is spreading at great speed: the “Stratus” or “Frankenstein” variant, XFG. It is causing high levels of sickness absence in nurseries, schools and care facilities and will further increase the number of long-COVID patients. Meanwhile, the government is pressing ahead unperturbed with its cuts to the healthcare system.

A woman passes a coronavirus test center in Duisburg, Germany, Tuesday, Oct. 12, 2021. [AP Photo/Martin Meissner]

In a short time, the “Stratus” variant has become the dominant strain worldwide and is showing “substantial” growth across all WHO regions (Western Pacific, North and South America, Europe). In Germany, it already accounted for 84 percent of identified SARS-CoV-2 variants at the beginning of October 2025. The XFG variant is also dominant in Austria and Switzerland, where it makes up as much as 80 percent of viral load in wastewater.

The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) has reported a marked rise in acute respiratory illnesses since September, affecting all age groups. Apart from rhinoviruses, SARS-CoV-2 viruses were the second most frequently detected pathogen.

According to RKI data, the estimated COVID-19 incidence rate in the second week of October was around 600 infections per 100,000 inhabitants—up from about 400 the previous week. The true number of cases is far higher, since testing is now extremely limited and unsystematic.

The term “Frankenstein” variant is no exaggeration, but an accurate description of a genetic monster. XFG is a recombinant variant formed from the Omicron lineages LF.7 and LP.8.1.2—a genetic fusion of components from different virus types, creating a new, more resistant and “fitter” strain.

The number of long-COVID patients will undoubtedly continue to rise. By the end of 2024, Germany had already registered more than 1.5 million people with long COVID or ME/CFS, with a blurred line between the two: the severe chronic multi-system illness ME/CFS, which also affects very young patients, is frequently the result of a COVID-19 infection. It often leads to complete and permanent incapacity for work, as the recovery rate is only about 5 percent per year.

But institutions such as the RKI and the government are downplaying the danger. There is a lack of systematic testing and studies on the clinical effects, and reporting on severe cases (for example, in intensive care units) has been “significantly reduced.” The system is deliberately flying blind.

The RKI and the Ministry of Health are advising senior citizens, vulnerable people and care workers to arrange vaccinations on their own initiative. Beyond the Standing Committee on Vaccination (STIKO)’s recommendation for risk groups, there are no emergency plans, protective measures or public addresses concerning the XFG wave. The governing coalition in Berlin is deliberately ignoring the spread and treating COVID-19 as a private illness, comparable to influenza, where everyone is responsible for themselves.

The Standing Conference of the State Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (KMK) has decided to maintain compulsory classroom attendance in schools. Despite rising XFG numbers in autumn 2025, it is ruling out the reintroduction of nationwide masking or testing requirements. Health Minister Nina Warken (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) is stubbornly sticking to her plan to cut €1.8 billion from hospitals alone. The healthcare budget has been slashed from €64 billion (2022) to €20 billion (2025)—less than one-third of its previous level.

The trivialisation of the pandemic has long since become systematic, both across Europe and worldwide. The WHO currently classifies the risk, despite the alarming spread of XFG, as “low,” claiming there is “currently no evidence that this variant causes more severe illness or more deaths than other circulating variants.” This risk assessment is cynical, not least given that, according to WHO estimates, around 36 million people in Europe are suffering from long COVID.

The WHO has extended its International Health Regulations (IHR) Standing Recommendations for COVID-19 until April 2026, demonstrating that the ruling class does not regard the pandemic as over. This is the official acknowledgment of a “permanent state of infection.” As medical journalist Dr Christoph Specht put it, “The virus has come to stay.” He told ntv.de: “We will always have to deal with the virus.”

The WHO’s Technical Advisory Group on COVID-19 Vaccine Composition (TAG-CO-VAC) considers the current antigens (JN.1 or KP.2) still suitable and stresses that they remain effective in preventing symptomatic and severe illness. This focus on protection against severe disease alone shows the conscious decision to abandon any strategy of elimination.

As a result, “Frankenstein” can spread unchecked through nurseries, schools, care homes and public transport, and thus across society as a whole. Sickness absences will continue to rise. Rates are already persistently high: according to AOK health insurer data, there were 228 recorded sick leaves per 100 AOK members last year, and even higher figures are expected this year. The main causes are respiratory illnesses, responsible for more than one in three absences.

It is being consciously accepted that elderly and vulnerable people will fall seriously ill, and that care homes, hospitals, nurseries and schools will be pushed to their limits or even collapse. Workers in public transport, childcare, teaching and nursing are expected to shoulder and make up for all absences despite low pay, while their parents, grandparents and vulnerable relatives fall ill and become care-dependent—at a time when care places are ever fewer and ever more expensive.

The dire consequences of COVID for the working class are the result of a deliberate policy pursued by all political authorities since the start of the pandemic. While serious scientists issued warnings, capitalist governments knowingly allowed the mass infection of society because a shutdown of production would have endangered the profits of major corporations.

“Profits before lives” has been the guiding principle ever since. On this basis, the SARS-CoV-2 virus was allowed to circulate freely, producing new, immune-evading and “fitter” lineages—such as the current XFG variant—that spread even more easily.

Ukraine faces financial crisis as winter approaches

Jason Melanovski

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky talks during the press conference in Kiev, Ukraine, Sunday, Aug. 24, 2025. [AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky]

The right-wing government of President Volodymyr Zelensky may potentially run out of funds by April of next year despite already receiving hundreds of billions in foreign aid, according to a recent report in Spain’s El Pais.

Sources from the EU cited in the article indicate that the Zelensky government only has enough remaining funds to continue functioning “until the end of the first quarter of 2026,” forcing Western imperialism to prop up Kiev with another round of financial aid.

As part of the ongoing campaign to continue the bloody proxy war against Russia, EU officials have proposed giving the Zelensky government a $163 billion “reparations loan,” using frozen Russian assets.

Ukraine would then only be obliged to repay the loan after the war ends and once Moscow has paid Kiev for damages as a result of the nearly four-year-long war. The Russian government has already categorically refused and called the EU proposal “theft.”

EU leaders are also viewing the seizure of Russian assets as a means to funnel the funds back into its own domestic defense industries and prepare for their own entry into the war by limiting Ukraine to buying European-produced weapons.

The Zelensky government, for its part, is resisting any limits on its use of the Russian loot, which would undoubtedly complicate its already fraught relationship with the Trump administration as it seeks to secure Tomahawk missiles from Washington.

“Ukraine’s position is that any conditionality undermines the principle of justice. So the victim, not the donors or partners, must determine how to address its most urgent defense, recovery, and compensation needs,” Iryna Mudra, a top legal adviser in Zelensky’s administration, said in an interview with Reuters.

As Mudra made clear, Ukraine “is already finalizing” military arms deals with European suppliers but must remain committed to its close military relationship with US-weapons manufacturers.

“But we would insist on autonomy in deciding how to allocate resources between defense—if there (are) not enough defense capacities in European countries, then we have to have the possibility to buy (them) from non-European countries,” Mudra told Reuters.

EU leaders are set to discuss the loan proposal further on Thursday in Brussels. According to a draft of the European Commission document seen by Reuters, some European states want the funds to go predominantly to European-made weapons, while others have proposed a compromise, permitting Kiev more flexibility as long as the funds are used primarily for European rearmament.

Underlining the financial crisis it is facing, on Wednesday, the Ukrainian parliament voted in favor of the country’s 2026 draft budget with a deficit of over 58 percent. According to the draft budget, it is estimated that the Zelensky government will spend around $114 billion next year while earning just $68 billion.

While the final 2026 budget will not be voted on until December, such disparities make clear that the Zelensky government is facing a huge budget deficit well into the billions in the coming year.

Earlier in July, the Financial Times estimated that Ukraine would be functioning in 2026 with a budget deficit from between $8 to $19 billion, depending on international financing.

Despite the massive financial shortfalls and immense loss of life, Kiev remains committed to the ongoing war. On Tuesday, Ukraine’s parliament voted to amend the country’s budget for the second time this year, raising defense spending by $7.7 billion to a record level of $70.86 billion for 2025.

Earlier in July, parliament voted to raise defense spending by $9.87 billion.

According to finance ministry data, in the first nine months of the year, the government spent more than 63 percent of its total budget to fund the army, which has continued to steadily lose territory to advancing Russian forces in Eastern Ukraine.

Surrounding the talk of sending billions more to Ukraine’s military, Russian forces in the past week have moved close to capturing the cities of Myrnohrad, Kostyantynivka, Siversk Kupiansk, and the strategically important transportation hub of Pokrovsk in the Donbass region.

Since the start of Russia’s invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has received about $152 billion in foreign financial aid from its imperialist backers, according to Reuters.

Despite the huge influx of Western funding, a recent report from the World Bank demonstrated that the war has, in fact, exacerbated both poverty and inequality within the country, which was already the poorest country in Europe prior to the war. The report titled “Monitoring Living Conditions in Ukraine: Fall 2025 Update” found that:

- Ukraine continues to experience high poverty and rising inequality in the fourth year of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

- The estimated preliminary poverty rate for 2025 is 36.9 percent, remaining at similar levels as 2024 (37.0 percent) and significantly higher than pre-2022 rates.

- Income inequality has worsened, with the Gini coefficient rising from 0.41 in 2023 to 0.50 in 2025, reflecting widening gaps between the poorest and wealthiest households.

- Since 2022, the Gini coefficient has doubled, now approaching the level of countries like Brazil (0.52) and Namibia (0.59).

- The leading cause of rising inequality is an uneven decline in labor incomes, with higher losses concentrated among those at the lower part of the income distribution.

- A decline in pensions in real terms, which affected poorer households more, further contributed to rising inequality between 2024 and 2025.

- 62.3 percent of respondents felt that they were financially worse off than prior to February 2022.

- The report also gives a glimpse of the staggering human toll of the conflict. It found that one in four households have at least one member who is internally displaced, a veteran, and/or has a disability. One in ten households has at least one member who has been disabled due to injuries suffered during the war, and the same proportion of households have at least one member living abroad.

It goes without saying that the issues of rising poverty and inequality as a result of the war, in which the imperialist powers use the Ukrainian working class as cannon fodder, will not be part of the discussions as EU leaders meet to plot how best to funnel Russian money into the pockets of their domestic arms manufacturers.