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Amazon Is Hiring Fewer Workers This Holiday Season, a Sign That Robots Are Replacing Them (qz.com)
Amazon is hiring around 100,000 additional employees this holiday season, which is fewer than the company added in either the 2016 or 2017 holiday seasons, when it brought in 120,000 additional workers. "Citi analyst Mark May says he thinks the reduction in seasonal hiring is strong evidence that Amazon is succeeding with plans to automate operations in its warehouses," reports Quartz. From the report: "We've seen an acceleration in the use of robots within their fulfillment centers, and that has corresponded with fewer and fewer workers that they're hiring around the holidays," May told CNBC. He added that 2018 is the "first time on record" Amazon plans to hire fewer holiday workers than it did the previous year. "Since the last holiday season, we've focused on more ongoing full-time hiring in our fulfillment centers and other facilities," Amazon spokesperson Ashley Robinson said in an email, adding that the company has "created over 130,000 jobs" in the last year. "We are proud to have created over 130,000 new jobs in the last year alone."
Amazon bought robotics company Kiva Systems for $775 million in 2012, and began using its orange robots in warehouses in late 2014. By mid-2016, it had become clear just how big a difference those robots were making. The little orange guys could handle in 15 minutes the sorting, picking, packing, and shipping that used to take human workers an hour or more to complete. In June 2016, Deutsche Bank predicted Kiva automation could save Amazon nearly $2.5 billion (those savings dropped to $880 million after accounting for the costs of installing robots in every warehouse).
Amazon bought robotics company Kiva Systems for $775 million in 2012, and began using its orange robots in warehouses in late 2014. By mid-2016, it had become clear just how big a difference those robots were making. The little orange guys could handle in 15 minutes the sorting, picking, packing, and shipping that used to take human workers an hour or more to complete. In June 2016, Deutsche Bank predicted Kiva automation could save Amazon nearly $2.5 billion (those savings dropped to $880 million after accounting for the costs of installing robots in every warehouse).
Following the last big industrial rev there was about 80 years of joblessness until new tech came along.
Interesting, but I can't quite find references to those 80 years ... would you mind providing some pointers ? Thanks !
when the world doesn't need ditch diggers?
The unemployed people can stay at home and read about economic fallacies.
Look, if you don't need to pay someone to do warehouse picking, then that money will go toward lower prices and/or higher dividends, putting that money into the pocket of someone else who will either spend it or invest it, thus generating jobs elsewhere in the economy.
The difference is that the warehouse picker was adding nothing to the total amount of goods and services produced, but the new job will, thus leading to a rise in living standards.
And for all that say they'll be new jobs, what? I want specifics.
Then buy some tarot cards. Nobody can see the future. Do you think a farmer in 1880 could see that his great-grandson would be a video game developer?
Following the last big industrial rev there was about 80 years of joblessness until new tech came along.
This is absolute nonsense. The last big surge of automation led to dramatic and nearly immediate improvements in standards of living.
Alright smart guy riddle me this....what EXACTLY are you gonna do with the average 100 IQ person? You can't wave a magic wand and make a person with 100 IQ into a rocket scientist, their brains simply do not function that way. Can't make them into an engineer, can't make them into programmers, hell even the army is having to slowly but surely raise its minimum IQ requirements because there is simply too much high tech involved (and if you want to see the truly horrific results when the US army tries to take those below the minimum? Look up "McNamara Moron Corps") and there is simply less and less that someone with anything less than a high IQ is gonna be capable of performing.
So what EXACTLY do you propose to do with them? Put them in camps? Sterilize them? Whether you want to accept it or not we are RAPIDLY reaching the point where you don't need a single human between the raw material and the store shelf. You can have a machine mine the materials or plant the crops, take the material via robot truck to a factory where lines of machines can process it into a finished product which goes again via robot truck to a automated warehouse. For fucks sake dude we are ALREADY at the point where they have automated burger flippers that are WAAAYYY BETTER than anything you would get in a fast food joint, you know what Mickey D's and the like haven't already switched? Because the government PAYS THEM in the form of subsidies it gives to those workers, for fucks sake man the FIRST TRAINING VID you see when you start work at Walmart is "How to get government subsidies" and if it wasn't for the US government essentially paying half their wages? Those people would already have been replaced!
Whether you want to wake up and see the Mac truck that is heading at society at 1000MPH plus doesn't change the fact that you are gonna have millions of people that are gonna be of zero use in a robot dominated society. Its the story of John Henry only we got the moral of the story wrong, the real moral was that it doesn't fucking matter if you literally work yourself into a grave as the machine will just keep going. It won't get tired, won't ask for sick days or for time to see its kids, won't ask for raises or care about working 24/7, it'll just do what its told day in and day out....and if you can't see how many corps are practically foaming at the mouth and chomping at the bit to get this tech so they can get rid of the hassle of all those workers they gotta pay wages and insurance and have to deal with getting hurt or sick on the job? Then puff puff pass dude, you been hitting the shit far too long!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Owners start to see a significant drop in sales.
Do you mean like the drop of sales when the steam engine was invented?
Oh, wait, that didn't happen. Sales went up.
Or the drop in sales when the automatic loom was invented?
Oh, that didn't happen either. Sales went up more.
Or the drop in sales when agriculture was mechanized?
Nope, that didn't happen either. Sales went WAY up.
Or the drop of sales when assembly lines and electrification became come?
Nope. The economy boomed.
So your theory that "rising productivity causes sales to decline" doesn't seem to be connected to reality.