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Businesses United States

Amazon Now Employs Almost 1 Million People in the US - or 1 in Every 169 Workers (nbcnews.com) 99

"Amazon now employs almost 1 million people in the U.S. — or 1 in every 169 workers," reports NBC News: Amazon has revealed for the first time the number of people it employs in the U.S., putting the figure at 950,000, according to the e-commerce giant's quarterly earnings call on Thursday. While the headcount was boosted by an additional 64,000 people hired in the second quarter, it does not include the thousands of contractors such as drivers whom Amazon depends on to run its Amazon Prime delivery operations...

Globally, the company employs 1.3 million people. It is the second largest employer in the U.S., behind Walmart, which currently employees nearly 1.6 million people in the U.S. As of June, the national private sector workforce is roughly 161 million people, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That means about 1 out of every 169 people in the country's workforce works for Amazon, while about 1 out of every 100 people in the U.S. workforce is employed by Walmart.

The article also notes that since 2018 Amazon has been paying a $15-an-hour minimum for all employees — more than double the current U.S. minimum wage of $7.25 an hour
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Amazon Now Employs Almost 1 Million People in the US - or 1 in Every 169 Workers

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  • I notice 2 things:

    1) There are MANY mistakes and unfortunate limits in the descriptions of products.

    2) Often the price on Amazon is much higher than on other web sites.

    Maybe the new CEO will fix the many problems.

    Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos will officially step down on July 5. Here are the top 5 things to know about his replacement, Andy Jassy. [businessinsider.com]. May 30, 2021
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by v1 ( 525388 )

      I don't see how either of those points isn't already a problem with local stores? Is this meant to be a comparison between Amazon and another alternative, or just a complaint in general about shopping?

      I do almost all of my online shopping either with Amazon (I have prime), Ali Express, or eBay.

      - eBay for things I can't find anywhere else (because it's usually a little higher price, and slower than Amazon) or where I'm looking for used
      - Ali for things I want as cheap as possible and don't mind waiting for
      -

    • by nadass ( 3963991 )
      The millions of Amazon employees aren't responsible for every description data-entry mistake on Amazon.com product listings; the majority are supplied by the selling merchants -- and Amazon's product listings team cannot correct every factual or grammatical error the instant an update is made (they're not geared towards doing that; the most they can responsibly do is notify the selling merchant of any grammatical errors but factual product mistakes are a different can of worms).

      I've never seen Amazon boa
  • by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Sunday August 01, 2021 @12:57PM (#61644127)

    As someone who lives in Upstate NY, where a lot of our once thriving towns are now shadows of their previous glory. Not because of politics, but because they were one or two large Business that kept the town going, and as they closed down over time, the towns were left with a big infrastructure without the tax base to pay for it.
    Amazon may seem like a tempting place to boost your economy, but what will happen in 20 years where Amazon leaves your small town, with all those new roads and infrastructure you had built up to make it attracted to them.

    • Then wall off your town from the world and do not allow any trade with the outside world. Prevent any of its citizens from leaving the town, cause God knows they will want out. Thatâ(TM)s the only way to preserve it. And it ought to be preserved, because preservation is the correct thing for the sake of it being correct. Nobody knows truly why.

    • It means those towns didn't diversify when they had the chance.

      • Most of these towns were not big enough to diversify.
        Some of the small cities like Troy, Schenectady, Rochester and Utica had the size and opportunity. But many of those small towns just had a economy around the core business. When that closed, the restaurant closes, the shops close...

        • by SeaFox ( 739806 )

          Your narrative seems to be painting this as Amazon (or some other retailer's) fault. The town has no one but themselves to blame if they put all their eggs in someone else's basket and then that basket is taken away. Maintaining infrastructure, tax base, attracting business investment, those are all things the local leadership has the responsibility to do. And it's not a "one time and done" thing. It's a continuous process.

          If the mayor thought he could "land the big Amazon Warehouse deal" and then sit on hi

        • Lends credence to the idea that you grow or die.

    • You too? Born buffalo, now a bit north of there. And yes, I work in heavy manufacturing and repair. The last 40 years have been *brutal*.

    • As someone who lives in Upstate NY, where a lot of our once thriving towns are now shadows of their previous glory. Not because of politics, but because they were one or two large Business that kept the town going, and as they closed down over time, the towns were left with a big infrastructure without the tax base to pay for it.

      Oh I wouldn't worry. Eventually buggy whips will come back in style.

    • "but what will happen in 20 years where Amazon leaves..."

      So the alternative would be to never let a business grow enough that its leaving would not be impactful? Sounds good, but then you'd never see the growth that large businesses can bring. I doubt Seattle is complaining about MS, or San Francisco about Google, or Detroit about GM.

      I'd rather see the boom/bust cycle than no boom at all. Some prosperity is better than none at all.

      • I think you underestimate San Francisco's capacity for complaining. Google could invent a vaccine for HIV and put an end to AIDS forever; and there'd be people in SF screaming bloody murder about it. That would mean all the charities that provide HIV medications and services to the infected poor would be shut down; because the funding would be redirected to purchase the vaccine. And that would result in some Googlers using the increase in their shares' price to buy houses, which would... you know... "co

  • I'm OK With This (Score:2, Interesting)

    by nadass ( 3963991 )
    Walmart employs 1.6MM in the USA, Amazon under 1MM, Target about 370k, and both UPS (under 500k) and FedEx (under 250k) combine for under 750k globally.

    I'm OK with this because of how these businesses are primarily focused: AMZN is primarily a supply-chain operations business (merchant services, warehousing, shipping, last-mile delivery) for both physical goods (their largest employment division and other bets like Basics-branded goods) and digital services (their original mega-growth segment via AWS clou
    • They are more efficient because they are even more abusive. And, compared to Walmart, that is saying something.

  • Amazon helped millions of people have a good retirement by enabling their retirement investment in Amazon shares (either directly or indirectly via 401k) to go up and also enabling cheaper products for them to buy.

  • The brawndo corporation simply bought the FDA, and the FCC, enabling them to say, do and sell anything they wanted.

    Brawndo, it's got electrolytes.

  • submarine PR, funny how the link then promotes amazon minimum wage and worklife. no marketing can hide exploitation, these number are only about the size of the pyramid
  • Does that number include the warehouse workers employed by outside agencies?

  • by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Sunday August 01, 2021 @11:08PM (#61645629) Journal

    I see people in here talking about buying ALL their groceries online from Amazon or buying most things from them... It's that mentality that helped the company grow so gigantic in size and scope.

    Now, I'm a free market Capitalist type myself, so I don't see ANY reason to cry for big government to try to squash them?

    But it's insane how many people whine about Amazon while continuing to support them.

    For my part, I've learned that "shopping online" is best done using search engines to find the online stores offering the best prices on what you need. Amazon hopes you'll skip that step and just search on THEIR site, out of convenience. You'll probably not get the best deal from them anymore, especially now that everything you purchase has sales tax added to it. But at this point, you also risk extra hassle with them because Amazon's own contracted delivery drivers are less likely to ensure a box gets to you reliably. Nobody's perfect, obviously. But at least when UPS delivers your package, you get an experienced employee, because the company doesn't even allow them to drive the truck and do deliveries until they put in time first in the warehouse/sorting center, loading trucks. Amazon is hiring on anyone who applies and can pass a basic background check, and then they're pushed to deliver in really tight time-windows. They wind up just throwing packages outside front entrances of buildings so they don't have to waste more time going in and putting it in front of the proper office suite's door, etc. I'll pay a bit more to not have that nonsense....

    • When things go wrong (wrong/defective product received), a big company like amzn will handle it for you hazzle free. A small/unknown website, though may offer a cheaper price is not going to be that easy to handle (you may need to call on phone and hope someone answers -- think about the time/energy you waste).
    • But it's insane how many people whine about Amazon while continuing to support them.

      eh, that's life. it's because they're popular and therefore, a lot of people have firsthand experience, so there're a lot of stories to go around.

      a bit like the US: "everyone hates the US" and all that, yet the US has the highest number of immigrants of any country, by far (source) [worldpopul...review.com], and once in the US, immigrants dont tend to leave. actions speak louder than words, eh.

      plus, shit-talking is just fun. the people, they love the drama.

      anyway, as an aside, i used to buy a lot of amazon, but now i only buy c

  • Someone must have intercepted news broadcast of a 13-fingered alien civilization.

    Otherwise, why choose such a weird milestone?
    - almost (but not quite!) 1 million workers
    - 1 out ov every 169 workers (not one out of every 200, or 150, or even, 170 workers)

    What prompted this peculiar timing? It's not a round number in decimal. 169 is 13x13, that's it.

  • That's $600 million every week (for a 40-hour work week). That's $31,200,000,000 every year. Of course, their revenue is ten times that but who's counting?

  • 1 out of every 169 people in the country's workforce works for Amazon, while about 1 out of every 100 people in the U.S. workforce is employed by Walmart

    The ratio is even higher if you exclude all the people sitting home collecting Pelosi's unemployment supplement.

  • One in EVERY 169 workers? I bet I can find 169 workers who are not employed by Amazon.

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