Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman argues AI won’t erase white-collar jobs as the company ramps up hiring

Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman said artificial intelligence will not eliminate white-collar jobs outright, countering a familiar warning that automation will hit office workers first. Garman’s remarks come as Amazon expands its early-career recruiting efforts, aiming to bring in thousands of graduates and interns.

Garman said AWS is hiring about 11,000 graduates and interns, describing the program as evidence that the company expects demand for new talent rather than a near-term collapse in junior roles. The recruiting effort is framed as part of Amazon’s broader strategy to keep building out its technology and services workforce as AI adoption accelerates across industries.

In the same context, Garman pointed to AWS’s developer ecosystem as another indicator of momentum. He said AWS has more developers than it had two years earlier, using that growth to argue that AI is pulling new people and skills into the cloud economy instead of displacing them across desk-based functions.

The statements were reported by Yahoo Finance, which characterized Garman as rejecting predictions that AI will eliminate many white-collar positions, especially those aimed at entry-level workers. The report also linked the hiring push to a more optimistic outlook for the job market among newer workers entering technology roles.

While the company did not provide, in the reported account, detailed breakdowns of which job families would be created or how many roles are directly tied to AI product work versus core cloud operations, the hiring figure suggests Amazon is betting that it can absorb increased AI-related demand through a mix of new graduates and interns.

Garman’s argument fits a broader industry debate. Cloud providers and enterprise software companies have increasingly positioned AI as a driver of new workloads, new automation services, and new platforms that require engineering, operations, data, and customer-facing skills. In that view, AI changes tasks more than it ends careers, though the transition can still be uneven across occupations and geographies.

Even so, AI’s effect on hiring is likely to vary by role. Garman’s comments, as described in the report, address a directional question about whether AI will “wipe out” white-collar jobs, but they do not quantify likely net job gains or explain what specific roles might be reduced as others expand. The company also did not outline any measurable timetable for how AI adoption might shift compensation levels, training requirements, or headcount across different business units.

Going forward, investors and workers will be watching whether Amazon’s recruiting plans translate into sustained operating leverage in AWS and whether the company ties AI-related hiring to concrete product launches, customer adoption metrics, or changes in how it staffs major engineering and support functions. Any follow-up disclosures about the types of roles targeted and the regions involved would help clarify what “more hiring” means in practice.