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Let's do some math for fun. Amazon now employs about a million workers in the US. Let's naively assume 3/4 of them work in warehouses and delivery as opposed
by mdorazio 5y ago
Let's do some math for fun. Amazon now employs about a million workers in the US. Let's naively assume 3/4 of them work in warehouses and delivery as opposed to corporate. Let's also assume they work, on average, 2000 hours a year (roughly full-time). For Amazon to raise those wages by $1/hr (or lower efficiency demands by ~7%) it would cost them around $1.5B every year.
Now, you're probably thinking that's chump change compared to Amazon's profits, but fun fact: Amazon's online sales segment doesn't make much profit. In fact, it lost $200M in Q4 [1]. So you basically want Amazon to either go deeply in the red, or else they have to raise prices on products to also raise worker wages.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/04/amazons-profit-engines-are-humming-despite-retail-slowdown.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/04/amazons-profit-engines-are-h...
- MathCodeLove 5y ago
- notch656a 5y agoRich man reasonable, but the idea Amazon sales are gross-margin-negative is borderline retarded. Margins on sales are going into other things, like re-investment in the business instead of wages. The loss is engineered to increase future revenue. That may create more jobs in the long run and make Amazon more competitive, but lets call a spade a spade.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jodrellblank 5y agoIf it was really losing $800M/year why would they keep it running at all? Could this be "creative accounting"?
- skinnymuch 5y agoAmazon doesn’t lose money with what you’re saying. They are moving money around. We need to stop trusting wildly rich and powerful people and corporations so much.