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Americans Are Lining Up To Work For Amazon For $15 an Hour (qz.com)
One of the most important takeaways from Amazon's 2018 fourth-quarter and full-year earnings report, released Jan. 31, had little to do with the usual financial results. Amazon disclosed in the report that it received a record 850,000 work applications for hourly jobs in the US in October 2018 after announcing it would raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour starting Nov. 1. From a report: The company said that was more than double its previous record for job applications received in a single month. Amazon said the new $15 minimum affects more than 250,000 employees in the US and 17,000 employees in the UK (where the increase was 10.50 pound in the London area and 9.50 pound everywhere else), plus more than 200,000 workers who were hired for the holiday season. As of Dec. 31, Amazon had 647,500 full- and part-time employees, up 14% from the same period a year earlier.
Drones.
I guess it beats flippin' burgers.....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Are these full time jobs or ways to make ends meet?
They should just learn to code.
Such a high minimum wage will never work because living wages aren't capitalist and this is literally white genocide and minimum wages literally killed the Lindbergh baby and a living wage is exactly the same thing as burning a flag and worse than 23 Benghazis and *pant pant pant*
*mops forehead with fedora*
Don't forget day 1 benefits. Full disclosure, I work for Amazon. And I haven't regretted it for a minute. Yes, the packers/pickers/stowers/etc do work hard, but as for as my FC is concerned, I haven't seen anything at all resembling the urban legend horror stories.
No thanks I'm petite bourgeois. I can just collect rent from skillcucks like you.
People are so fucking stupid (and brainwashed by the right-wing media), that they'll blame the poor instead of me. It's a good time to be born middle class.
Capcha: Commute. That's what you do :D
850,000 people lining up for $15/hour despite the repeated documentation of truly terrible, dehumanizing working conditions. Amazon employees urinate in bottles and trash cans in the warehouse because it's faster than going to the bathroom and they might face consequences for wasting that much time. They get various injuries as a result of proper industrial hygiene. They get fired for being ill. They're treated like disposable meat-bots. But I guess that's better than no job.
I have no facts to back up this feeling, but I'm suspicious that something has gone wrong with the way we measure unemployment and underemployment in the US. We're at about 4% unemployment, lowest in ~50 years. Unemployment that low should drive wages up, but they reportedly aren't even rising as fast as inflation. So, congratulations, here's some wage growth, but it comes at the cost of the boss' recognition of your humanity.
From 1965--2015, real median annual household income in the US increased by about 11%. In 2015 dollars, median household income in 1965 was about $50,000 per year... in 2015, it was about $56,500. Meanwhile, real GDP per capita increased by about 150%. Now, it's true that average household size decreased over that time, but not by nearly enough to explain this stagnation. It's also true that employees have had non-monetary benefits like health insurance, but employers have been gradually chipping away at those benefits.
Maybe these things aren't as important as I suspect they are, and maybe my intuition is just not good in this area. Like I say, I can't exactly explain what the core problem is, but the symptoms make me uneasy.
So start up your own distribution center and pay people half that, you bootstrappy captain of industry who clearly understands the great and subtle machinations of the economic machine we call America, and knows the commoners better than the commoners themselves. You'll dominate the market in no time with that kind of acumen.
Depends.
$15 an hour in Omaha, NE would be a good deal more attractive than $25 an hour in the SF Bay area.
Downside? Once folks are mandated a living wage for holding a job, automation and robotic replacement become incrementally more attractive.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
When people are forced into not being people anymore, but livestock of a monster, it's time to rethink your society. As a whole.
I have been doing trade work for 20 years and make damn near 30 dollars an hour. I work for a small company 6 people counting the owner.. Said owner would love to expand and hire more people and is willing to pay 18 to 20 an hour if the people are willing to show up everyday and prove they can do the work but most people one can't do the work two don't show up everyday then bitch about not getting enough hours. So the truth is there is plenty of well paying trade work its just now days people expect to be paid to do next to nothing so let them do nothing for nothing. and this isn't just my trade. I deal with people from all kinds of trades in my job and its the same with them. At least half the people that apply for a job don't show up their first day and the half that do don't last 2 weeks because you actually want them to work. Btw I do concrete work. When I started my trade there were 15 to 20 people in there 20 starting to do this kind of work now most people are in their late 30s or older. Trade workers are a dying breed and in another 10 to 20 years most of us will be gone and who will build your houses and roads then. . im also not really and anonymous coward I just forgot my password and am too lazy to reset it.
Just like the immigrants that built the railroads. They have no options. System working as designed.
Have you ever seen the inside of a meat packing plant? None of those people want to be there. They have to be there because they have no other options.
It's pretty sad that this many people are lining up for these jobs. Read between the lines. This is pretty damn bad.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
More attractive, certainly.... but not not necessarily practical on account of limitations on technology and potentially very high up-front costs, at least for the time being.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Sorry but that's just not true. The general consensus on Slashdot, one of which I happen to share, is In the future all we'll need is white-collar STEM work. Blue collar labor isn't necessary or valuable. It doesn't matter that you won't be around to build our houses because it'll all be automated and we'll be a country of 90% coders. That's just how it is.
Coders and Buzzfeed reporters. Plus we will all have Teslas.
"At least half the people that apply for a job don't show up their first day"
Quite aligned with the fact that you don't answer to at least half of the resumes you get.
How is it that when "they" do it is "damn lazies" but when you do it is "bussiness as usual"?
nope
Funny how the conversion to the UK is the complete opposite of retail prices.
When Amazon import goods to the UK they try to rip the UK off by heavily increasing the price. When they do the same for pay the price is drasticly reduced.
UK is well known as a place of rip off prices and so many companies try to stock the grey market places.
When will the bean counters and HR realize years of experience with the same job title does not bring higher quality workers. Higher wages do. You want to know why software developer salaries have gone up more? Easy, if you want something done you gotta pay the market wage.
Or is this socialism because it makes the CEO and Wall Street cry?
http://saveie6.com/
Yep, just as planned. Now they can be more selective and implement quarterly stack-ranking even for hourly employees. Gotta love that turnover to keep benefits and retirement costs down.
Pretty sure the only reason any of us have a job can be tied to the fact that we just can't automate it yet. Once something can be automated with reliable on par or nearly on par with a person, means it will be soon enough. Especially if a cheap manager hears about it.
In the mean time I'll just keep on doing things that still require people to be involved whenever possible. A good example is getting my driver's license renewed. California wants to charge me $35 for this. I can renew by mail, phone or online. If I go online I'm fairly certain no person will have anything to do with me getting my license. Be shocked if it wasn't totally automated.
If that's even close to true, why the heck does it have to cost $35? Powering and keep the server maintained doesn't cost that much so clearly it's just fleecing the taxpayers that drive. Not very progressive of them, unless there is some kind of waiver for low-income. I couldn't find one with a quick search.
My little protest will being sending a paper check in the mail with the form filled out. I'm hoping someone will have to actually read and input that information. At least then I can say the $35 went to actually processing my renewal.
A base pay of $15/hour is so last year.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
How many of the positive comments in this discussion thread about being a warehouse worker for Amazon are paid astroturfers for Amazon Corporate trying to discredit the reports of alleged mistreatment of employess, poor working conditions, and so on? Or are you really going to believe that it's all some Amazon competitor trying to poison public opinion against them?
Far from the first time we've heard a litany of complaints about a big retailer over working conditions, either; Walmart comes to mind.
It'd also be far from the first time some big corporation tried to hush things like this up and whitewash it all by some means or other to protect themselves from liability.
Always question.
I'm not sure a lot of people realize (or want to realize) it, but Amazon was a proponent of the $15/hr. minimum wage laws from early on. That's simply because they know they're big enough and have enough money to handle that on their payroll, while many of their smaller competitors don't. They aren't trying to pay people more money because they're so generous and kind! They're trying to squeeze out their competition.
(And frankly? One of the reasons Amazon isn't hurt by having to pay that high a minimum wage is because it got such lucrative corporate welfare deals from New York and Virginia as they paid out BIG bucks to win the right to get HQ2 located there. (Virginia gave Amazon something like $20,000 for every single employee it was going to hire at that location.)
This idea of setting the lowest bar of what's legal to pay a person to do some work for you at $15/hr. is a bad one. There are a whole lot of jobs that companies only pay human beings to do as long as it's cheaper than automating them. $15/hr. is getting REALLY close to crossing that threshold, and is why you see so many places who pay their people better supplementing them with automated kiosks and checkout lanes. They're going to offset the increased labor expenses by hiring fewer people.
Depends.
Where I live, it's a four to eight hour time expenditure to physically attend a driver's license renewal... every other 6 yr renewal, they allow me to renew online. For my last visit to the DMV, I arrived 90 minutes early (last year) and was 65th in line, so in addition to the $35ish fee, the time cost was still a half day.
Your argument is identical to the one that says we should stop ordering everything online and shop brick and mortar stores where we can to keep humans employed in jobs they're eventually going to lose, anyway.
Humans are unlikely to shed the selfish gene.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Is this because entry-level jobs are rare, or because jobs paying $15/hour are rare?
Your argument is identical to the one that says we should stop ordering everything online and shop brick and mortar stores where we can to keep humans employed in jobs they're eventually going to lose, anyway.
I suspect that his motivation was more along the lines of wanting to feel as though he was getting his money's worth.
Anyway, I like to shop locally when I can. When I find something I want on Amazon, I look to see if Best Buy has it, because BB has a policy of price-matching Amazon. Too many people use brick and mortar stores as Amazon showrooms -- I wonder what they plan on doing when Amazon finally puts the brick and mortar stores out of business.
And not long after companies realize that there is nobody able to buy their products.
Wait a second here... Do you mean to tell me that Americans will do "jobs that Americans won't do" if you pay them a living wage with benefits?
n/t
So, I was curious. I've never worked for minimum wage, I've either been dead broke in poverty and desperate and living in the back of a car which was waiting to be repossessed or I've make 6 figures but never between. I never had the chance to live like a normal person.
So, I just searched Omaha for apartments. It seems that a two bedroom apartment in a nice suburb will cost you $1030 a month. To secure this, it would require a $3090 a month income. That's about $18 an hour or it can be done at $15 an hour at 9.5 hours a day assuming time and a half overtime.
A 2014 BMW i3 with range extender would cost $18000 to $302 a month over 72 months. This is a good car because the resale value shouldn't drop considerably and after paying the car off, you can pay about the same for another year for a battery refurbishment. This car should have a very low cost of ownership (I drive one and it's almost like being paid to drive) and it should be relatively reliable. The only disadvantage is that it would have to be serviced by a BMW shop. But, it's still a far better purchase than a $12500 gas vehicle that has substantially more parts to break and replace... and pay gas for.
Car insurance will run about $125 a month on that for a 30+ man or woman.
I just grocery shopped online at one of the more expensive grocery stores I know of and shopped as if I had to budget. This didn't mean being stingy, but it meant grocery store brand over name. It meant fresh foods over packaged. It meant not paying double for organic. Choosing to shop the sales, etc... I came up with what should be a grocery card for a family of two including a month supply of soaps (bathroom, dish, laundry...), paper towels and toilet paper, tooth brushes, etc... I came up at $223. I suppose that using coupons and time as well as shopping at a non-rich person store would get it to $150, but I also didn't get anything really fun, it looked like what a healthy family would eat... you know, the kind of family where the parent loves the children instead of giving them food from boxes. So, let's choose $600 a month as a relatively round number for essentials (food, etc..) for a family of two.
Then there's clothes. Depending on your needs, you can dress fairly well on a budget of $100 a month for an adult... this will also cover buying new winter coats. And you can dress a child for $150 a month. They grow and require replacement of stuff much faster. So let's calculate $250 a month
The person would need furniture as well, but you can't budget that monthly, you buy that over 20 years and piece by piece. You inherit what you need from other people until you can buy the thing you actually want.
Then there's electricity, water, internet and telephones. I think even someone much better than I am at budgeting would still find this costing about $400 a month.
So, $1030 (rent), $600 (food stuff), $300 (Car), $125 (car insurance), $250 a month (clothes, shoes, etc..), $400 a month for utilities and phone.
We're up to $2900 a month. If the person manages to get 9.5 hours a day, they would earn $3090 a month. I think even if they get almost 100% tax free, they would still have to pay social security which I think is about 10%, so there goes $300 a month.
So, this person, if I don't account for any additional oopsies would be about $100 a month in the whole...at least.
The car is paid off in 6 years, so if they can do 8 years, that's probably an extra $100 a month in the bank. And if the car lasts 25 years... as it should since it's basically all plastic and easy to replace parts, after the loan is paid, the cost of ownership should drop to $100 a month. But that doesn't help earlier on.
There's no room for day car or babysitting... so, being a single parent would be REALLY REALLY difficult.
They could get a cheaper apartment, but the goal isn't survival. For $1000 a month, you get an apartment with a gym, a pool and other things. This is considered living like a human instead of someone who is simp
Why does a single worker in an unskilled job need a two bedroom apartment in a nice suburb, plus a fancy car?
If your hypothetical person shared that flat, they're instantly $500 a month better off, and that takes them from living below the breadline to being able to save a little a month.
You suggest a 6 year finance deal on a fancy car, but $300 a month is ridiculous. An older car will need more maintenance and fuel, but not $3600 a year worth. In the UK, I'd suggest buying an old VW Polo, which gets comparable fuel economy to an i3 but can be bought outright for less than 4 months of your lease. Even if it needs replacing in a year, it's still cheaper by over $1000 a year! I know small cars aren't popular in the US so they might not be so available.
You have a ridiculous sense of entitlement. The financial problems of your hypothetical minimum wage worker are entirely caused by setting unreasonable expectations of living space and having a luxury car.
Yes, I have an 1800 sq. ft. house now with a BMW 5 series on the drive, but 15 years ago I drove a beater and shared a house with 3 people to get by. I worked my way up to what I have, I didn't just expect it.
It's not entitlement to expect some basic human decency when working full-time for a minimum wage. I agree with you that one can get by with a lot less than a newish BMW and a 2br apartment for oneself. However, 7.25/hr makes it damn near impossible to beat the cycle of poverty and qualifies one for living assistance. Not to mention that BMW and spare bedroom is a tremendous advantage in this day and age. Supplementing income is as easy as signing up for Uber and AirBnB
The Mexicans are taking the jobs "americans dont want"
I wonder if that is a lie that assholes tell themselves to justify paying below minimum wage for dangerous landscaping work?
I guess we'll never know! Vote for her!
Yup, you've never been poor. Amazon is a dystopian nightmare, but $30k is solid for unskilled labor.
Roomate. Apartment not in the good part of town. 5-year-old Honda Fit or Civic for under $10k, lasts forever. $300 is plenty for food. That's doing OK.
Roomates. Apartment where you hear gunshots every night. 15-year-old shitbox. $150 is plenty for food if you cook. That's gettin by.
Good times. Any time you make a payment. Good times. Any time you meet a friend. Not getting hassled. Not gettin hustled. Keepin your head above water. Makin a wave when you can.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Iâ(TM)ll bet these people rushing to take these $15 per hour jobs probably have no more than a high school education. I canâ(TM)t even fathom settling for a $15 hour job. Iâ(TM)m guessing rates of obesity, alcohol abuse and smoking are prevalent in the group too. They probably believe the man is out to get them.
Well aren't you a sheltered little houseplant. So you have no idea what the people who work for that kind of money or less are like, so you make up stereotypes.
Your Honda Civic approaches that $1,000 a year to maintain under various conditions.
1. Live in a neighborhood or community where second hand vehicles were rarely if ever maintained. Resulting in cars that do not last long. (My last Nissan was like that, ten thousand usd at the dealership, and four years before the maintenance skyrocketed and still couldn't keep it from keeling over before it hit 200k miles.)
2. Grow up in the city where it is practically illegal to work on your own vehicle. (Changing the oil in your driveway would get you evicted.) Then have higher upkeep costs because you couldn't learn to tinker.
3. Incur more than one unexpected expense. Survival at $15 an hour or less is a gamble. Either the gamble pays off and you get out of poverty, or the gamble fails and you wind up on the streets.
4. Operate without a support network. Say everybody around you is making less than $15 an hour. You're the one who is wealthy. Those unexpected expenses at #3 get worse when you can't lean on somebody else until you get your costs under control.
5. Not have maximum cost saving measures in place. These days there are energy efficient homes and appliances, and vehicles, and double-pane windows, etc. If you're setup then you have a much lower cost of living than the guy in the converted once was a trailer with no insulation and dry rotting window frames that are not air tight, and are probably being held together by duct tape. Running window units and space heaters. And ancient appliances and vehicles that just increase in their costs. It costs more money to be poor than to be wealthy.
I donâ(TM)t make up the stereotypes, they already exist for a reason.
I donâ(TM)t make up the stereotypes, they already exist for a reason.
While we're stereotyping, blacks are criminals and people with Spanish accents are illegals. Hey man it exists for a reason, therefore you must support it. QED.
soo, you're a virgin manlette living in your mom's basement and try not to go outside all week ?
LOL. That feeling of superiority you feel, it is fake.
No, only was trying to point out making and acting on stereotypes with zero knowledge is a bad thing
How does the wholly unoriginal basement comment fit with this claim? I understand that an adult with children working hourly retail has probably made many many poor choices that have led to the lure of $15 per hour sounding so good. I couldnâ(TM)t even pay my mortgage payment on that. I came from stock that would think that is good pay, luckily I knew that I could do more.
I want commenting on racial stereotypes, those are false. Class stereotypes are typically spot on. People confuse classism and racism.
it's a slashdotter stereotype about basement.
as for saying it had to be poor choices, plenty of places in rural america near town that has the usual wallmart etc. where $15 an hour is just fine and not much else available. Just think, houses there might be $45K and so are cheaper for them than for you in relation to wages.
LOL $45k house. Even in rural America not even close. I live in a small town of 700 and I commute (50+ miles) to a major metropolitan area several days a week . My house was approximately $400k with a substantial down payment. I came from small towns, I got out. Lots of ignorant people, eating, drinking and smoking away their lives. No matter if they are far left or right, always the same. Take up the vice of choice instead of working to better ones self. They are owed those high paying jobs that a 16 year old could do you know! Society stratifies for a reason.
LOL $45k house. Even in rural America not even close. I live in a small town of 700 and I commute (50+ miles) to a major metropolitan area several days a week . My house was approximately $400k with a substantial down payment. I came from small towns, I got out. Lots of ignorant people, eating, drinking and smoking away their lives. No matter if they are far left or right, always the same. Take up the vice of choice instead of working to better ones self. They are owed those high paying jobs that a 16 year old could do you know!
there are definitely $45K houses in rural Illinois on country roads around areas such as effingham, decatur, bellivile... looking at them in listings right now. I have relatives down there.
So you paid $400K for your house, must be very nice. close to big cities will do that kind of pricing...
but far from those huge cities it's another world, and there are things about that life that are better than what you and I face.... much less pollution, stress, crime, traffic jams etc. People starting to telecommute from those kinds of places, a few people at my work do
I know these people applying in numbers like that for hourly jobs. I came from poor trash, I know of what I speak. I crawled up from the mire that hourly retail work is. Feel all the indignation for me you want Ignacio, but it is a sign of the lack of education and drive when so many apply for a meager pay rate. Shit, they could make a lot more working with me, and we have lots of trouble hiring due to competition for jobs and a limited talent pool, but people wonâ(TM)t invest in themselves.
oh really? and where are these people hundreds of miles from your higher paying jobs supposed to go? are you saying they should sell their $45K house and move near a city with the $450K houses like you have? spend $5000 on training? oh yeah, get the free scholarship that covers room and board for a college hundreds of miles away..right, everyone who applies gets that.
It is called supply and demand. It is called evolution. Amazon is not placing warehouses in locations with small talent pools. Your arguments are specious at best. The people running to take these jobs have high school educations and live in population centers.
Amazon? I'm talking about people who would take $15 an hour jobs and are NOT low motivation losers but just happen to live where pay and costs are far different than yours
So my original comment was about people rushing to get $15 per hour that have little or no abilities and the life choices theyâ(TM)ve made. You get that right?