Amazon is no longer Seattle's largest employer, as office departures and waves of layoffs reshape the company's workforce in the city.
Amazon's head count in Seattle peaked in 2020, with about 60,000 employees. The company, like its peers in the tech industry, ramped up hiring to meet the demand of the pandemic. This coincided with Amazon's decadelong development of Seattle's Denny Triangle and South Lake Union nearing completion.
But Amazon's workforce in Seattle has shrunk to under 50,000 employees, according to an internal head count tool. Once the largest employer, public or private, Amazon is now behind the University of Washington, which has 50,316 employees in Seattle, according to the school.
Amazon hasn't pursued future development in the city since its public spat with the City Council over a short-lived per-employee tax in 2018. Instead, it shifted its growth to Bellevue and Redmond, dubbing the entire Puget Sound region as its HQ1. The company has more than 14,000 employees in Bellevue, according to the city's latest financial report.
Growth aside, Amazon's workforce in Seattle has been shaped by other factors since its peak during the pandemic.
As the pandemic waned and workers continued to stay home, Amazon and other tech companies seriously reconsidered their space needs. While Microsoft was moving out of office towers in Bellevue, Amazon was mirroring those actions in Seattle. Since 2020, Amazon has left at least six office buildings near its headquarters, totaling about 1 million square feet.
The company has also gone through massive waves of layoffs since 2020, the most recent of which affected about 3,300 employees in Seattle between October and January.
Amazon has ordered workers back to the office five days a week, but it's still getting rid of office space in Seattle.
Amazon confirmed this week it's leaving another office building in the Denny Triangle in May, a move first reported by the Puget Sound Business Journal. The company will not renew its lease at 1915 Terry Ave., a 251,000-square-foot office building owned by Seattle Children's.
Amazon spokesperson Alisa Carroll said the employees based in the building will go to other offices throughout the Puget Sound headquarters.
Built in 1953, the 1915 Terry building is a few blocks from Amazon's main Day 1 tower and the Spheres. But the building, like others that Amazon has vacated over the past six years, falls into one of two categories: old or shared.
After Amazon planted its flag in the Denny Triangle and South Lake Union neighborhoods, it rapidly expanded in the 2010s as it built out its urban campus. During that time, Amazon squeezed its fast-growing workforce into old, renovated buildings and offices with multiple tenants as newer buildings were developed. Two of the bigger office properties Amazon left in 2023 and 2024 were shared with other tenants, though Amazon held a majority of the space in the buildings.
The company’s leasing activity since signals that it doesn’t like to share office buildings. Amazon is the sole tenant in most of its offices in Seattle, as well as the newer office towers it occupies in Bellevue.
More lease expiration dates are coming up for Amazon in Seattle in the next few years, as it's common for commercial office leases to have 10- to 15-year terms. But Amazon hasn't cemented the precedent for letting the next one up expire. The company renewed its lease in a Seattle office tower, at 1918 Eighth Ave., in 2023 and actually expanded to become the tower's sole tenant for security measures, the company told the Puget Sound Business Journal in 2024.
Amazon's current head count in Seattle — about 49,800 per the internal metric — still looms over most other employers in the city and remains the state's largest employer with more than 90,000 employees. With the company's Seattle workforce alone, Amazon would still be a top-five employer in the entire state.
The University of Washington's total workforce in the state also makes it a top employer with more than 53,000 employees, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal. Employment has remained relatively steady in recent years at the university, which has campuses in Bothell and Tacoma, as well as Seattle.
As Amazon slowly sheds workers in Seattle, that may be Bellevue's gain. But even the city across Lake Washington has had to contend with the fickle real estate whims of a tech giant.
Microsoft, which left New Mexico and landed like a would-be conqueror in Bellevue in 1979, ready to launch its software empire, spent the postpandemic years retreating to its Redmond campus.
The company's employee count peaked in 2021 with roughly 9,300 employees, according to city financial reports. But over the next few years, the workforce quickly dwindled as Microsoft vacated multiple office towers in downtown Bellevue and office parks along Interstate 90. The city's 2023 financial report didn't even list Microsoft as a top 10 employer.
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