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>$15 an hour, Amazon’s starting wage, is below the average for the warehousing industry Where are they getting this information? The average wage in the US is

>$15 an hour, Amazon’s starting wage, is below the average for the warehousing industry Where are they getting this information? The average wage in the US is lower, like $13-14. https://www.indeed.com/career/warehouse-worker/salaries https://www.indeed.com/career/warehouse-worker/salaries https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Warehouse_Worker/Hourly_Rate https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Warehouse_Worker/Ho...

fastball 5y ago
Presumably they're being disingenuous and comparing the average salary across the entire industry (including senior positions / management / etc) to Amazon's salary floor, while you are making the appropriate comparison to a warehouse worker. And even then comparing an average to a minimum would still be disingenuous.
- lrdswrk00 5y ago
  Disingenuous based upon math. Bezos’ wealth is disingenuous built on disingenuous narrative he did it himself and is somehow entitled to as much political scrip he can leverage. Fiat currency makes belief in a persons wealth not much different than belief in a holy mans connection to God. Decoupled from their actual output, coupled to their ability to maintain a social meme. Religion is effectively the same; belief decoupled from observable reality. We’re all playing a disingenuous semantic game, and it’s hurting all of us.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    Was it ever different? The saying "All that glitters is not gold" exists for a reason.
    - lrdswrk00 5y ago
      Exactly. All your warm fuzzies about yourself are not for me to bother with. I am as beholden to coddling all y’all’s self as you are to making sure people who need it today have cheap insulin. It’s a semantics free market not a financial one. If my efforts undo your wealth, zero fucks. See we get to pick and choose who figuratively exists. Doesn’t have to be Bezos or you. Or me. None of us are gold or glitter. As none of us are concepts. Just meat bags. I’m fine disabusing people of their importance so long as they are inclined to allow it to happen to others. You’re all on your way out. There is no Valhalla and your work will be forgotten. Why assign value to such unimportant things? Edit: oh no downvotes; all my influence! Good thing I was around to buy AAPL in the 90s at $6-9/share. Four letters are more valuable to me than your opinions. I know you all get that.
      - f6v 5y ago
        You’re downvoted because it’s gibberish.
        lrdswrk00 5y ago
        Yup, so is the original comment. The meaning of all that “glitters is gold” applied to reality is arbitrary. I don’t have obligation to recite some historical meaning the author might intend. I can see Bezos as glittering now but not gold. I can see accruing fiscal wealth as the same. The only language with concrete meaning are the outputs of physical science experiment. There is or is not a physical object or force. Colloquialism are subjective. The when and where to apply a math formula is subjective. Just because one can be defined such that it abides the order of operations of math doesn’t mean it represents reality accurately. Who eats still comes down to political influence. We can help a lot more people thrive if we socially allowed for less rounding off of who is valuable. But since we prefer to do that; why not round off this community as unimportant? You’re all just as normal as anyone.
      - birdyrooster 5y ago
        Good luck with your mental health.
        lrdswrk00 5y ago
        My goal is to make you all feel how I feel reading this forum. Seems it worked.
Frost1x 5y ago
I take data from these sites with a grain of salt because it seems far too easy and tempting to poison the data well for those wishing to see the rates lower than reality. Payscale is a bit closer to what I think reality might be. It's unfortunate how gaming perception and such information is such a potentially successful strategy. The OOH from DOL puts it closer to $14.66/hr which I put a bit more faith in: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/mobile/hand-laborers-and-material-movers.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/m...
- vortico 5y ago
  I don't see starting average pay on the OOH website, only median pay.
  - Frost1x 5y ago
    That is correct.
  - mint2 5y ago
    So a measure less skewed by outliers, even better.
    - renewiltord 5y ago
      It’s pretty flattering to Amazon to compare them to the industry median pay and find that their starting pay beats it. If you start at Amazon you beat half of all warehouse workers across their entire tenure.
- jefftk 5y ago
  That's 'median pay', though, not 'average starting pay'.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
I have a long-time friend who tried to get an Amazon Warehouse job after relocating to a new city for his SO’s career. Given all of the negative press he assumed they’d be desperate for employees and he could walk right into the job. It turns out those jobs are highly competitive in the area because they paid relatively well and had good benefits. The hourly rate alone doesn’t tell the full story. Many more typical warehouse jobs are truly hourly jobs with minimal or no benefits. He said a lot of them tried to hire people for less than full time to avoid having to provide benefits. For all of the negative press, it sounded like the Amazon Warehouse was the place to be if you wanted a decent warehouse job with benefits in his area.
- tester756 5y ago
  who would've thought that vocal minority on twitter does not reflect reality for all, cuz at the end of the day Amazon hires above milion ppl So, just to add another opinion I've seen only positive comments (sample size around 3) about working in Amazon's warehouse in Poland
  - snypher 5y ago
    3 more anecdotes isn't going to make the data any better :)
    - treeman79 5y ago
      It makes 3 points better. Just needs a few thousand more!
      - drewcoo 5y ago
        Actually, more noise makes the data worse.
      - Rexxar 5y ago
        The problem is not the number of points but the sampling method. It should be properly randomize to be useful.
swyant 5y ago
I believe it partly comes from this, which is for non-supervisory positions across the board (including truckers): https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag493.htm#earnings https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag493.htm#earnings However, if you look at the table below that, even when you differentiate to more specific occupation, median (and certainly mean) wages are above $15. Perhaps there's a further differentiation to "hand laborers and materials movers" that brings this number down further, per the other BLS link in this thread. I'd be curious about regional differences though, e.g. in Bessemer https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/business/economy/amazon-wages-alabama-union.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/business/economy/amazon-w...
boomboomsubban 5y ago
>Where are they getting this information? The average wage in the US is lower, like $13-14 Could just be a calculation error. If you just saw indeed's average total yearly salary that would show slightly over $15 an hour but wouldn't factor in overtime hours.
fortran77 5y ago
They also seem to pick on "seasonal work". I'm sure there are many people who are willing to take a job that's a bit of a "grind" to have some extra cash for a holiday celebration. If you know you'll only be doing this job for two months, you'll have a different mindset and you won't feel trapped.
MaxGhenis 5y ago
>Our starting hourly wages are at least $15 per hour for all full time, part time, and seasonal employees and contractors. https://www.aboutamazon.com/workplace/employee-benefits https://www.aboutamazon.com/workplace/employee-benefits
CharlesW 5y ago
> The average wage in the US is lower, like $13-14. Not all sources support that claim: https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/warehouse-worker-hourly-wages https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/warehouse-w...
seventytwo 5y ago
They said “warehousing industry”, and you looked up “warehouse worker”. That’s probably the discrepancy, fwiw.
vanusa 5y ago
Under the second link you provided I'm seeing: $14.33 / hour Avg. Base Hourly Rate (USD) So not only are you seriously quibbling over a $0.67 per hour discrepancy - but you're doing so dishonestly (attempting to make a 5 percent discrepancy look more like 15 percent).

fastball 5y ago

Presumably they're being disingenuous and comparing the average salary across the entire industry (including senior positions / management / etc) to Amazon's salary floor, while you are making the appropriate comparison to a warehouse worker. And even then comparing an average to a minimum would still be disingenuous.

lrdswrk00 5y ago
Disingenuous based upon math. Bezos’ wealth is disingenuous built on disingenuous narrative he did it himself and is somehow entitled to as much political scrip he can leverage. Fiat currency makes belief in a persons wealth not much different than belief in a holy mans connection to God. Decoupled from their actual output, coupled to their ability to maintain a social meme. Religion is effectively the same; belief decoupled from observable reality. We’re all playing a disingenuous semantic game, and it’s hurting all of us.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  Was it ever different? The saying "All that glitters is not gold" exists for a reason.
  - lrdswrk00 5y ago
    Exactly. All your warm fuzzies about yourself are not for me to bother with. I am as beholden to coddling all y’all’s self as you are to making sure people who need it today have cheap insulin. It’s a semantics free market not a financial one. If my efforts undo your wealth, zero fucks. See we get to pick and choose who figuratively exists. Doesn’t have to be Bezos or you. Or me. None of us are gold or glitter. As none of us are concepts. Just meat bags. I’m fine disabusing people of their importance so long as they are inclined to allow it to happen to others. You’re all on your way out. There is no Valhalla and your work will be forgotten. Why assign value to such unimportant things? Edit: oh no downvotes; all my influence! Good thing I was around to buy AAPL in the 90s at $6-9/share. Four letters are more valuable to me than your opinions. I know you all get that.
    - f6v 5y ago
      You’re downvoted because it’s gibberish.
      - lrdswrk00 5y ago
        Yup, so is the original comment. The meaning of all that “glitters is gold” applied to reality is arbitrary. I don’t have obligation to recite some historical meaning the author might intend. I can see Bezos as glittering now but not gold. I can see accruing fiscal wealth as the same. The only language with concrete meaning are the outputs of physical science experiment. There is or is not a physical object or force. Colloquialism are subjective. The when and where to apply a math formula is subjective. Just because one can be defined such that it abides the order of operations of math doesn’t mean it represents reality accurately. Who eats still comes down to political influence. We can help a lot more people thrive if we socially allowed for less rounding off of who is valuable. But since we prefer to do that; why not round off this community as unimportant? You’re all just as normal as anyone.
    - birdyrooster 5y ago
      Good luck with your mental health.
      - lrdswrk00 5y ago
        My goal is to make you all feel how I feel reading this forum. Seems it worked.

Frost1x 5y ago

I take data from these sites with a grain of salt because it seems far too easy and tempting to poison the data well for those wishing to see the rates lower than reality. Payscale is a bit closer to what I think reality might be. It's unfortunate how gaming perception and such information is such a potentially successful strategy. The OOH from DOL puts it closer to $14.66/hr which I put a bit more faith in: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/mobile/hand-laborers-and-material-movers.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/m...

vortico 5y ago
I don't see starting average pay on the OOH website, only median pay.
- Frost1x 5y ago
  That is correct.
- mint2 5y ago
  So a measure less skewed by outliers, even better.
  - renewiltord 5y ago
    It’s pretty flattering to Amazon to compare them to the industry median pay and find that their starting pay beats it. If you start at Amazon you beat half of all warehouse workers across their entire tenure.
jefftk 5y ago
That's 'median pay', though, not 'average starting pay'.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

I have a long-time friend who tried to get an Amazon Warehouse job after relocating to a new city for his SO’s career. Given all of the negative press he assumed they’d be desperate for employees and he could walk right into the job. It turns out those jobs are highly competitive in the area because they paid relatively well and had good benefits. The hourly rate alone doesn’t tell the full story. Many more typical warehouse jobs are truly hourly jobs with minimal or no benefits. He said a lot of them tried to hire people for less than full time to avoid having to provide benefits. For all of the negative press, it sounded like the Amazon Warehouse was the place to be if you wanted a decent warehouse job with benefits in his area.

tester756 5y ago
who would've thought that vocal minority on twitter does not reflect reality for all, cuz at the end of the day Amazon hires above milion ppl So, just to add another opinion I've seen only positive comments (sample size around 3) about working in Amazon's warehouse in Poland
- snypher 5y ago
  3 more anecdotes isn't going to make the data any better :)
  - treeman79 5y ago
    It makes 3 points better. Just needs a few thousand more!
    - drewcoo 5y ago
      Actually, more noise makes the data worse.
    - Rexxar 5y ago
      The problem is not the number of points but the sampling method. It should be properly randomize to be useful.

swyant 5y ago

I believe it partly comes from this, which is for non-supervisory positions across the board (including truckers): https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag493.htm#earnings https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag493.htm#earnings However, if you look at the table below that, even when you differentiate to more specific occupation, median (and certainly mean) wages are above $15. Perhaps there's a further differentiation to "hand laborers and materials movers" that brings this number down further, per the other BLS link in this thread. I'd be curious about regional differences though, e.g. in Bessemer https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/business/economy/amazon-wages-alabama-union.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/business/economy/amazon-w...

boomboomsubban 5y ago

>Where are they getting this information? The average wage in the US is lower, like $13-14 Could just be a calculation error. If you just saw indeed's average total yearly salary that would show slightly over $15 an hour but wouldn't factor in overtime hours.

fortran77 5y ago

They also seem to pick on "seasonal work". I'm sure there are many people who are willing to take a job that's a bit of a "grind" to have some extra cash for a holiday celebration. If you know you'll only be doing this job for two months, you'll have a different mindset and you won't feel trapped.

MaxGhenis 5y ago

>Our starting hourly wages are at least $15 per hour for all full time, part time, and seasonal employees and contractors. https://www.aboutamazon.com/workplace/employee-benefits https://www.aboutamazon.com/workplace/employee-benefits

CharlesW 5y ago

> The average wage in the US is lower, like $13-14. Not all sources support that claim: https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/warehouse-worker-hourly-wages https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/warehouse-w...

seventytwo 5y ago

They said “warehousing industry”, and you looked up “warehouse worker”. That’s probably the discrepancy, fwiw.

vanusa 5y ago

Under the second link you provided I'm seeing: $14.33 / hour Avg. Base Hourly Rate (USD) So not only are you seriously quibbling over a $0.67 per hour discrepancy - but you're doing so dishonestly (attempting to make a 5 percent discrepancy look more like 15 percent).