UPS Slashes 30,000 Jobs Related to Amazon Glide-Down

Last year, UPS cut 48,000 positions. The carrier isn’t done slashing its workforce yet.

During Tuesday’s Q4 2025 earnings call, the carrier shared how reductions impacted revenue in 2025, and how it intends to continue reducing Amazon volume while increasing revenue in 2026.

Today, we’re talking about how UPS is cutting staff, closing buildings, and reducing operational hours, and how those changes may affect your 2026 shipping strategy.

UPS + Amazon Glide-Down: The Numbers

In the latest UPS financial release, CEO Carol Tomé said, “2025 was a year of considerable progress for UPS as we took action to strengthen our revenue quality and build a more agile network.” She says that once the Amazon glide-down is complete, “2026 will be an inflection point in the execution of our strategy to deliver growth and sustained margin expansion."

During the UPS Q4 2025 earnings call, Chief Financial Officer Brian Dykes shared the expected variable, semi-variable, and fixed costs associated with the Amazon glide-down in 2025 and those planned for 2026:

• 2025 variable costs: Total operational hours reduced by 26.9 million

• 2025 semi-variable costs: Reduction in operational positions by 48,000, including 15,000 fewer seasonal employees than the prior year

• 2025 fixed costs: 195 operations closures, including 93 building closures

• 2026 variable costs: Total operational hours reduced by 25 million

• 2026 semi-variable costs: Reduction in operational positions by up to 30,000

• 2026 fixed costs: 24 building closures in the first half of 2026, with potentially more to come in the second half.

Why all the cuts? Tomé shared that, in 2025, the carrier “reduced Amazon’s volume in our network by approximately 1 million pieces per day...and for the full year 2026, we intend to glide down another 1 million pieces per day while continuing to reconfigure our network.” Once UPS’s top customer, the glide-down of its partnership with Amazon will save the company approximately $3 billion this year.

What Does This Mean For UPS Customers?

If you’re a UPS customer, you may be wondering if and how these closures and layoffs will affect your deliveries.

Tomé said that, despite the 93 building closures and automation of 53 others, the carrier remained “disciplined on revenue quality and product mix and grew U.S. revenue per piece by 7.1% year-over-year.”

Still, it stands to reason that more than 110 fewer buildings and nearly 80,000 fewer employees will have some effect on operations.

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UPS is cutting costs to raise revenue. Don’t let its reductions impact your service. Call ShipRx for a free Savings Analysis and make UPS’s loss your gain.