amazon manager here: it's the same with us. our director gave told us to manage out more people this year to hit our revised headcount targets for next year. there are no layoffs, just larger-than-normal targets for managing out people. I talked with friends across various orgs and the targets seem to range between 10% to 25% for different teams (as opposed to 5% for normal years).
Yet, Amazon has over 13,000 open tech positions: https://www.amazon.jobs/en/landing_pages/tech-roles
In most large companies hiring and firing people are totally different, and rarely ever talk to each other. This is why in most companies if the top management wants to make a big layoff, they first let go the 'recruiting staff', and then work from there.
In smaller layoffs, I'd imagine they'd continue to fill in open positions, while eliminating positions they think they don't need.
There's also another thing where they want to fill in people where they think need for their newer/hot/important project which they think will give them better profits. And cut people/shut down projects which they think are not important/profitable.