9 ms·

That's wild. Does any other company have this problem?

fragmede 1y ago
Walmart
mschuster91 1y ago
Agriculture, food processing and handling and everything associated, particularly meatpacking, and that's valid across countries. There's a reason that even if you pay (relatively) obscene wages, there will be no domestic employees willing to pick up these jobs - the work conditions are usually horrible because there are few industries as cut-throat and cost-sensitive as anything related to food. The root cause is global competition, especially from countries with very low wages - Ukraine, a country in Europe, for example, was a top food supplier for Africa -, and widespread income disparity in many Western countries - 67% of Americans self-report to live from paycheck to paycheck [1], for example. First it's "luxuries" that get the cut - travel, eating out, entertainment - and once everything has been cut, people go for savings in food because that's the last large expenses block that they can meaningfully control. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/living-paycheck-to-paycheck-youre-not-alone-67-percent-of-people-are-in-2025-11812027 https://www.investopedia.com/living-paycheck-to-paycheck-you... [2] https://www.boeckler.de/de/boeckler-impuls-vermoegen-nur-jeder-dritte-hat-reserven-6400.htm https://www.boeckler.de/de/boeckler-impuls-vermoegen-nur-jed...
- regularfry 1y ago
  Don't forget cheap bulk transport. Without that, cheap remote food from global competitors becomes expensive fast.
  - ethbr1 1y ago
    Which is to say ocean trade (and to a lesser extent rail).
- natebc 1y ago
  The Maritime industry can run into this too. Tug companies, barge companies. The level of consolidation vs the size of the labour pool is what does it.
- sandworm101 1y ago
  Competition and subsidies. Nearly every country has a system to help farmers "compete", which drives down prices even more imho.
- shkkmo 1y ago
  } There's a reason that even if you pay (relatively) obscene wages, there will be no domestic employees willing to pick up these jobs - the work conditions are usually horrible because there are few industries as cut-throat and cost-sensitive as anything related to food. This sentence is rather self contradictory...
  - MisterTea 1y ago
    Yeah I am not sure that is true either. People will work at these facilities but we all know the conditions there are horrible because they can get away with it - you can't threaten an American with deportation for whistle blowing. As long as companies get away with abusing immigrants then the labor market will always keep them in demand.
    - JAlexoid 1y ago
      As long as consumers expect certain foods to be cheap(beef, for example) - you'll get this issue. Kale in US is about as expensive as the cheapest cut of beef. Despite one taking 2-3 years of labor and the other is 60 days.
- nxor 1y ago
  I know plenty of Americans who choose to live paycheck to paycheck. That said, I agree that the food industry is cut throat.
  - garciasn 1y ago
    Of course you do: estimates via survey show that roughly 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. This is an 2x increase from 30y ago.
    - jghn 1y ago
      The problem is that these are usually measuring self described rates. And people aren't using the same definition when self describing. Have come across plenty of people who claim to be living paycheck-to-paycheck because they have nothing left over after maxing out 401k & IRA, socking away $1K in a savings account, paying for their posh apartment, and more. But of course that's not what it's supposed to mean.
- mastax 1y ago
  > About 41% of American workers earning between $300,001 and $500,000—and 40% of those making over $500,000—say they’re living paycheck to paycheck, according to a new report from Goldman Sachs. https://am.gs.com/en-us/advisors/insights/report-survey/retirement-survey https://am.gs.com/en-us/advisors/insights/report-survey/reti... The only reasonable conclusion is "are you living paycheck to paycheck" is a useless survey question.
  - prewett 1y ago
    Another reasonable conclusion is that many people are foolishly over-leveraged. If you buy the biggest/nicest/best house and the priciest you can possibly manage, you will be living paycheck to paycheck almost by definition, since your house/car/etc payments will be eating up all your paycheck. I don't know how often this actually happens, but it certainly not an unreasonable conclusion.
    - president_zippy 1y ago
      I'm surprised FIRE hasn't killed the luxury car and McMansion market yet. Hmm... What do I wanna do more? Keep up with the Joneses, or flip the bird to my boss? Hmm...
      - ethbr1 1y ago
        HN/FIRE is in no way representative of the general population. One of the central evils of consumer advertising is that it implants the idea in everyone's heads that buying more material things = happiness. And the ideal consumer is one which only stops buying when they've reached their income...
        president_zippy 1y ago
        I don't think that kind of advertising is directly advertising happiness. Luxury car ads advertise status more than anything. They're more subtle about it than Equinox gym marketing with its weird, sexualized elf people, but the product they're really selling you is being better than your peers.
swiftcoder 1y ago
Very few other singular companies have Amazon's rate of growth. I joined in 2012, they just crossed 95k employees worldwide. By the time I left in 2017 they were over half a million. These days they seem to have plateaued around 1.5 million... that's just a ridiculous number of employees
- Yeul 1y ago
  Here in the Netherlands immigrants are starting to protest about their near slavery conditions. As time goes on you have to start importing people from further afield.
  - sharpshadow 1y ago
    Hopefully we find extraterrestrial intelligence soon.
    - Yokolos 1y ago
      Maybe they need to invent a time machine to start getting immigrants from different time periods?
      - asdfasvea 1y ago
        [flagged]
      - Cockbrand 1y ago
        Slightly tangential: there's an excellent Norwegian TV series based on the premise of suddenly appearing immigrants from earlier time periods, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beforeigners https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beforeigners.
        vizzier 1y ago
        and a south park episode for ones from the future :D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goobacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goobacks
gambiting 1y ago
I read somewhere recently that 60% of all retail sales in US are with Amazon. No other company has this kind of scope.
- wat10000 1y ago
  Total US retail sales are over $700 billion per month, which is more than twice what Amazon does in a year. Amazon isn't even #1 in the US; that prize belongs to Walmart.
  - dspillett 1y ago
    Both facts could be true, if the previous post was referring to the cardinality of sales not combined value and the average Amazon sale is lower than the average sale overall.
    - wat10000 1y ago
      The average Amazon sale would have to be ~25x lower than the overall average, seems rather unlikely. Not to mention that counting sales only makes sense within a product category.
      - cestith 1y ago
        60% may be true in some random product category, but clearly not across all of retail. Maybe that’s what’s being remembered, but missing the surrounding context.
        wat10000 1y ago
        It might be a sign flip of their share of online sales. They account for about 40% of online sales (yes, in-person retail still vastly outweighs e-commerce), so 60% of online sales are not Amazon.
- jjk166 1y ago
  It's 6.6% https://www.emarketer.com/content/amazon-will-surpass-40-of-us-ecommerce-sales-this-year https://www.emarketer.com/content/amazon-will-surpass-40-of-...
jiveturkey 1y ago
Some entire industries have this problem, eg trucking. There is this shortage of truck drivers. The quiet part is that it's at the rates trucking companies are willing to pay. That rate is based on what they can charge to customers plus a thin profit margin. Because trucking is too easy to get into, companies can't simply raise their rates because other companies will undercut them (in their own desperate bid to survive). This kind of market competition is healthy for the "market", perhaps not healthy for workers. The depletion of tech workers for Amazon is similar. The part that isn't said is: at the salaries Amazon is willing to pay. Amazon has a different market to worry about, the stock market. They can't just increase their HR spend 25% without taking a hit in the stock market. And I guess they aren't willing to change the work environment to be more attractive. Maybe they can't at their size, as it can be hard to avoid dead weight. Google doesn't hire in the US for some PAs, for similar reason. Salaries are capped (artificially) by stock market demands. But Google doesn't call it worker depletion.
- tjwebbnorfolk 1y ago
  Shortages always exist at a given price. If people demand their iphones cost only $100, there would be a massive shortage of iphones. Same goes for labor: if you pay shit, demand for that job is going to be shit. Of course on the labor side, part of the "price" is job satisfaction, working conditions, etc. Many more people would rather be receptionists at $17/hr than working in a warehouse or factory for the same rate.
  - parpfish 1y ago
    i think another part of it is whether there's any meaningful difference in value for a mediocre vs good employee. let say you ran a trucking company and decided that you'd pay more to ensure you cornered the market on 'good' drivers. but... it turns out that your customers don't care if you have good drivers or mediocre drivers, so you can't justify charging a higher rate.
    - darrylb42 1y ago
      With rates of drivers hitting overpasses mediocre is a high target here.

Walmart

Agriculture, food processing and handling and everything associated, particularly meatpacking, and that's valid across countries. There's a reason that even if you pay (relatively) obscene wages, there will be no domestic employees willing to pick up these jobs - the work conditions are usually horrible because there are few industries as cut-throat and cost-sensitive as anything related to food. The root cause is global competition, especially from countries with very low wages - Ukraine, a country in Europe, for example, was a top food supplier for Africa -, and widespread income disparity in many Western countries - 67% of Americans self-report to live from paycheck to paycheck [1], for example. First it's "luxuries" that get the cut - travel, eating out, entertainment - and once everything has been cut, people go for savings in food because that's the last large expenses block that they can meaningfully control. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/living-paycheck-to-paycheck-youre-not-alone-67-percent-of-people-are-in-2025-11812027 https://www.investopedia.com/living-paycheck-to-paycheck-you... [2] https://www.boeckler.de/de/boeckler-impuls-vermoegen-nur-jeder-dritte-hat-reserven-6400.htm https://www.boeckler.de/de/boeckler-impuls-vermoegen-nur-jed...

regularfry 1y ago
Don't forget cheap bulk transport. Without that, cheap remote food from global competitors becomes expensive fast.
- ethbr1 1y ago
  Which is to say ocean trade (and to a lesser extent rail).
natebc 1y ago
The Maritime industry can run into this too. Tug companies, barge companies. The level of consolidation vs the size of the labour pool is what does it.
sandworm101 1y ago
Competition and subsidies. Nearly every country has a system to help farmers "compete", which drives down prices even more imho.
shkkmo 1y ago
} There's a reason that even if you pay (relatively) obscene wages, there will be no domestic employees willing to pick up these jobs - the work conditions are usually horrible because there are few industries as cut-throat and cost-sensitive as anything related to food. This sentence is rather self contradictory...
- MisterTea 1y ago
  Yeah I am not sure that is true either. People will work at these facilities but we all know the conditions there are horrible because they can get away with it - you can't threaten an American with deportation for whistle blowing. As long as companies get away with abusing immigrants then the labor market will always keep them in demand.
  - JAlexoid 1y ago
    As long as consumers expect certain foods to be cheap(beef, for example) - you'll get this issue. Kale in US is about as expensive as the cheapest cut of beef. Despite one taking 2-3 years of labor and the other is 60 days.
nxor 1y ago
I know plenty of Americans who choose to live paycheck to paycheck. That said, I agree that the food industry is cut throat.
- garciasn 1y ago
  Of course you do: estimates via survey show that roughly 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. This is an 2x increase from 30y ago.
  - jghn 1y ago
    The problem is that these are usually measuring self described rates. And people aren't using the same definition when self describing. Have come across plenty of people who claim to be living paycheck-to-paycheck because they have nothing left over after maxing out 401k & IRA, socking away $1K in a savings account, paying for their posh apartment, and more. But of course that's not what it's supposed to mean.
mastax 1y ago
> About 41% of American workers earning between $300,001 and $500,000—and 40% of those making over $500,000—say they’re living paycheck to paycheck, according to a new report from Goldman Sachs. https://am.gs.com/en-us/advisors/insights/report-survey/retirement-survey https://am.gs.com/en-us/advisors/insights/report-survey/reti... The only reasonable conclusion is "are you living paycheck to paycheck" is a useless survey question.
- prewett 1y ago
  Another reasonable conclusion is that many people are foolishly over-leveraged. If you buy the biggest/nicest/best house and the priciest you can possibly manage, you will be living paycheck to paycheck almost by definition, since your house/car/etc payments will be eating up all your paycheck. I don't know how often this actually happens, but it certainly not an unreasonable conclusion.
  - president_zippy 1y ago
    I'm surprised FIRE hasn't killed the luxury car and McMansion market yet. Hmm... What do I wanna do more? Keep up with the Joneses, or flip the bird to my boss? Hmm...
    - ethbr1 1y ago
      HN/FIRE is in no way representative of the general population. One of the central evils of consumer advertising is that it implants the idea in everyone's heads that buying more material things = happiness. And the ideal consumer is one which only stops buying when they've reached their income...
      - president_zippy 1y ago
        I don't think that kind of advertising is directly advertising happiness. Luxury car ads advertise status more than anything. They're more subtle about it than Equinox gym marketing with its weird, sexualized elf people, but the product they're really selling you is being better than your peers.

swiftcoder 1y ago

Very few other singular companies have Amazon's rate of growth. I joined in 2012, they just crossed 95k employees worldwide. By the time I left in 2017 they were over half a million. These days they seem to have plateaued around 1.5 million... that's just a ridiculous number of employees

Yeul 1y ago
Here in the Netherlands immigrants are starting to protest about their near slavery conditions. As time goes on you have to start importing people from further afield.
- sharpshadow 1y ago
  Hopefully we find extraterrestrial intelligence soon.
  - Yokolos 1y ago
    Maybe they need to invent a time machine to start getting immigrants from different time periods?
    - asdfasvea 1y ago
      [flagged]
    - Cockbrand 1y ago
      Slightly tangential: there's an excellent Norwegian TV series based on the premise of suddenly appearing immigrants from earlier time periods, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beforeigners https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beforeigners.
      - vizzier 1y ago
        and a south park episode for ones from the future :D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goobacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goobacks

gambiting 1y ago

I read somewhere recently that 60% of all retail sales in US are with Amazon. No other company has this kind of scope.

wat10000 1y ago
Total US retail sales are over $700 billion per month, which is more than twice what Amazon does in a year. Amazon isn't even #1 in the US; that prize belongs to Walmart.
- dspillett 1y ago
  Both facts could be true, if the previous post was referring to the cardinality of sales not combined value and the average Amazon sale is lower than the average sale overall.
  - wat10000 1y ago
    The average Amazon sale would have to be ~25x lower than the overall average, seems rather unlikely. Not to mention that counting sales only makes sense within a product category.
    - cestith 1y ago
      60% may be true in some random product category, but clearly not across all of retail. Maybe that’s what’s being remembered, but missing the surrounding context.
      - wat10000 1y ago
        It might be a sign flip of their share of online sales. They account for about 40% of online sales (yes, in-person retail still vastly outweighs e-commerce), so 60% of online sales are not Amazon.
jjk166 1y ago
It's 6.6% https://www.emarketer.com/content/amazon-will-surpass-40-of-us-ecommerce-sales-this-year https://www.emarketer.com/content/amazon-will-surpass-40-of-...

jiveturkey 1y ago

Some entire industries have this problem, eg trucking. There is this shortage of truck drivers. The quiet part is that it's at the rates trucking companies are willing to pay. That rate is based on what they can charge to customers plus a thin profit margin. Because trucking is too easy to get into, companies can't simply raise their rates because other companies will undercut them (in their own desperate bid to survive). This kind of market competition is healthy for the "market", perhaps not healthy for workers. The depletion of tech workers for Amazon is similar. The part that isn't said is: at the salaries Amazon is willing to pay. Amazon has a different market to worry about, the stock market. They can't just increase their HR spend 25% without taking a hit in the stock market. And I guess they aren't willing to change the work environment to be more attractive. Maybe they can't at their size, as it can be hard to avoid dead weight. Google doesn't hire in the US for some PAs, for similar reason. Salaries are capped (artificially) by stock market demands. But Google doesn't call it worker depletion.

tjwebbnorfolk 1y ago
Shortages always exist at a given price. If people demand their iphones cost only $100, there would be a massive shortage of iphones. Same goes for labor: if you pay shit, demand for that job is going to be shit. Of course on the labor side, part of the "price" is job satisfaction, working conditions, etc. Many more people would rather be receptionists at $17/hr than working in a warehouse or factory for the same rate.
- parpfish 1y ago
  i think another part of it is whether there's any meaningful difference in value for a mediocre vs good employee. let say you ran a trucking company and decided that you'd pay more to ensure you cornered the market on 'good' drivers. but... it turns out that your customers don't care if you have good drivers or mediocre drivers, so you can't justify charging a higher rate.
  - darrylb42 1y ago
    With rates of drivers hitting overpasses mediocre is a high target here.