American Express Cuts 3,500 Jobs to Make Room for AI

American Express will eliminate roughly 3,500 positions, about 5% of its global workforce, the company disclosed Friday on its third-quarter earnings call. The announcement came alongside a $336 million pretax restructuring charge and, in the same breath, a raised full-year earnings outlook, a combination that tells you everything about how management wants the market to read this.

CEO Stephen Squeri broke the news to analysts directly, according to CNBC, framing the cuts as a condition for the company's next growth phase rather than a response to any financial distress. CFO Christophe Le Caillec, speaking separately to CNBC, put it plainly: the restructuring is designed to make Amex "leaner, more agile, and also to prepare for AI."

The company had almost 77,000 employees at the end of 2025, per CNBC. At 5%, the reduction puts the job-loss count at approximately 3,500 heads. According to a report by yourNEWS citing company materials, roughly 60% of the cuts are expected to hit support functions, including developers, the kind of detail that makes the AI rationale harder to dismiss as spin.

On the revenue line, the quarter was solid. According to USNN World News, adjusted earnings per share came in at $4.68, topping the $4.48 analyst estimate. Revenue reached $20.06 billion for the quarter, a 9% increase year over year, though it landed slightly below the consensus forecast of $20.13 billion. The company raised its full-year profit outlook despite absorbing the restructuring charge.

According to Reuters, as cited by yourNEWS Media, the layoffs are designed to "reduce layers and speed up decision making", management language that signals the primary target is organizational complexity, not a specific failing business line.

The Amex move fits a pattern building across financial services this quarter. Barclays separately confirmed plans to cut roughly 5,000 positions, also about 5% of its staff, according to CNBC. That parallel is worth flagging: two major card and banking franchises announcing equivalent percentage cuts in the same week, both citing AI readiness, is not coincidence.

Data from layoff tracker Layoffs.fyi, cited by USNN World News, show that 69% of employees laid off so far this year have been displaced due to artificial intelligence, up from 29% for all of 2025. Research firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported that AI had been cited in more than 120,000 announced job cuts this year, per yourNEWS Media.

Squeri's forward guidance language deserves the usual skepticism applied to any CEO call. The phrase "accelerate innovation" is doing heavy lifting in a sentence where the main action is eliminating 3,500 people. What management hasn't said is which AI deployments are mature enough to replace the work those employees were doing. That detail, if it surfaces at all, will come in a 10-K footnote, not a Friday earnings call.

Sources cited:
- CNBC (https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/23/american-express-job-cuts.html)
- yourNEWS Media (https://yournews.com/2026/10/23/7236720/american-express-to-cut-3500-jobs-as-company-restructures-workforce/)
- USNN World News (https://usnn.news/american-express-laying-off-5-percent-of-workforce/)
- Quartz (qz.com) (https://qz.com/american-express-job-cuts-ai-restructuring-workforce-102326)