Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren is grilling several major employers, including Amazon (AMZN), Target (TGT), and UPS (UPS), about their recent spate of layoffs.
In letters sent Sunday to the executives of Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon, Home Depot (HD), Meta (META), Nike (NKE), Verizon (VZ), Target, and UPS, Warren asked the companies to detail by March 30 how much of a tax cut they received in 2025 following President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, whether they anticipated any tariff refunds, and whether they made any contributions to Trump’s projects, among other queries.
Combined, the companies account for tens of thousands of lost positions in the past several months.
Due to current economic conditions, “newly laid off workers could be forced to take lower-paying jobs — if they are able to find employment at all,” Warren wrote.
While the overall layoff rate remains near historically low levels, any worker cast out of a job right now has to contend with one of the most strained labor markets in years. That’s thanks to few new jobs being added, few workers quitting their current positions, and fierce competition for entry-level jobs even among experienced professionals.
Warren questioned why the companies laid off workers even after last summer’s sweeping tax law bestowed new benefits for corporations.
Meta, for example, “paid an effective federal income tax rate of just over 3.5 percent in 2025, the lowest it has recorded since the company went public as Facebook in 2012,” Matt Gardner at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy wrote in an analysis last month.
And Reuters reported over the weekend that Meta is considering laying off up to 20% of its workforce.
“The sequence of events behind these layoffs — which come after your company enjoyed huge tax breaks from President Trump’s tax law and earned record profits last year — raises questions about the rationale for the job cuts, and whether they represent another example of unchecked corporate greed emboldened by the Trump administration,” Warren wrote to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
A Meta spokesperson told Yahoo Finance that Warren’s letter was “based on speculative reporting about theoretical approaches.” Other companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Other companies’ rationales for layoffs vary, with some citing productivity gains from AI while analysts point to corporate bloat, and others say they just want to become more efficient.
Amazon, which announced layoffs of 16,000 workers in January, pointed to efforts to reduce bureaucracy. Cuts at UPS, which will affect 30,000 positions this year, come amid plans to reduce Amazon deliveries. Meta called recent reports that it plans to cut 20% or more of its staff this year “speculative,” but the company did lay off roughly 600 employees in its AI unit last year.
