NELP | INJURIES, DEAD-END JOBS, AND RACIAL INEQUITY IN

NELP | INJURIES, DEAD-END JOBS, AND RACIAL INEQUITY IN AMAZON’S MINNESOTA OPERATIONS | OCTOBER 2021

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

Executive Summary

Amazon directly employs over a million people in the U.S.

It is now the second largest

private-sector employer and the largest warehouse employer in the country.

As such,

Amazon has tremendous power to improve the standard of living for many in the U.S.,

including for the Black workers on whom it relies disproportionately for its front-line

operations, and for Black women in particular, who make up the largest group of front-line

workers at the company.

While Amazon has repeatedly represented itself as a model employer paying high wages,

Amazon workers across the U.S. have increasingly spoken out about inadequate pay and

called for the company to raise wages.

In this report, we marshal the latest data to help address two primary questions. First, how

does Amazon’s pay compare to other warehouse employers? And second, how far is

Amazon’s warehouse pay from middle income-compensation in the places where it

operates?

Our analysis suggests that the company’s pay is inadequate compared to other warehouse

employers and insufficient for workers to approach even average earnings in the

counties where they work. We find that while Amazon tends to operate in higher-earnings

counties, warehouse workers in Amazon counties actually take home less each month

on average than their counterparts in other U.S. counties. This difference is even

Photo: M

issouri Workers Center

Black Friday 2022 STL8 strike

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

starker when Amazon counties are measured against other high-earnings counties

with warehouses. We also find that this was not the case before Amazon arrived in those

counties, suggesting that Amazon’s pay rates have substantially shifted average

warehouse earnings lower in the counties where it operates.

Examining the latest available Census data on county-level earnings, we have two major

groups of findings.

They are:

1. Comparing counties with and without Amazon fulfillment centers suggests that

Amazon pays less than other warehouse employers.

i. Amazon predominately locates its warehouses in high-earnings

counties. Seventy-eight percent of counties with Amazon fulfillment

centers are in the top 20

percentile of U.S. counties with warehouses

with respect to average earnings for all workers in all industries.

ii. When measured against other comparable U.S. counties with no

Amazon fulfillment centers, high-earnings Amazon counties show

substantially lower pay for warehouse workers. On average,

warehouse workers in high-earnings Amazon counties make 18 percent

less—$822 less a month—than warehouse workers in non-Amazon

counties that are similar with respect to average earnings for all workers

in all industries.

iii. In the counties where Amazon operates, the gap between

warehouse worker earnings and middle-income earnings is wider

than in other counties. In the high-earnings counties where Amazon

operates fulfillment centers, warehouse workers’ earnings are

substantially less than average earnings for all workers in those same

counties—a difference of 30 percent.

By contrast, in comparable non-

Amazon counties, warehouse workers make closer to the average for all

workers in those same counties, about 8 percent less.

2. Comparing warehouse earnings before and after Amazon’s arrival likewise

suggests that Amazon pays less than other warehouse employers, making middle-

income earnings further out of reach for warehouse workers.

i. Before Amazon’s arrival, warehouse worker earnings were on par

with other warehouse counties. In 2005, before Amazon had begun

operating fulfillment centers in the counties in our analysis, earnings for

warehouse workers in those future Amazon counties were similar to the

earnings for warehouse workers in other comparable counties,

suggesting that Amazon pays less than other warehouse employers.

ii. Before Amazon’s arrival, earnings were closer to middle-income. In

2005, before Amazon established fulfillment centers in the counties that

now host them, warehouse workers in high-earnings Amazon counties

earned much closer to the average for all workers in those counties—10

percent less, compared to 30 percent less currently as mentioned above.

By contrast, other comparable counties saw little change (negative 8

percent on average in both 2005 and 2022), suggesting that Amazon’s

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

arrival had a pivotal effect on warehouse worker earnings where it set

up shop.

Amazon’s public filings show that it can easily afford to pay more if it prioritizes fair

pay for its workers over profit, acquisitions, real estate purchases, and global

expansion. Examining Amazon’s public filings as detailed below shows that by using just one

tenth of its annual profit, Amazon could pay each of its U.S. front-line workers an additional

$2,225 a year, or nearly $200 more per month.

In addition, the amount that Amazon spent on

acquiring other companies in 2022 and 2023 could fund a $16,000 one-time bonus for each of

its U.S. front-line workers.

What’s more, reducing the money the company spends on

expanding its real estate holdings by just a tiny fraction annually would likewise free up

money that could provide thousands of additional dollars in pay per year to each of its U.S.

front-line workers.

Finally, with one quarter of the money it has spent on average each year

since 2010 to expand operations in Europe, Amazon could increase pay for each of its U.S.

front-line workers by $4,268 each year.

Taking measures like these would profoundly

improve the standard of living for hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S.

We conclude with a series of recommendations aimed at ensuring that Amazon lives up to its

promise of being a leader in worker compensation.

Given Amazon’s role as a large-scale

employer throughout the U.S., particularly of Black and Latinx workers, achieving a better

livelihood for Amazon workers is a crucial step towards advancing racial justice and building

a good jobs economy for all in this country.

Photo: A

thena Coalition

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

Contents

Executive Summary ...........................................................................................................................1

I. Introduction ..............................................................................................................................5

II. Key Findings ..............................................................................................................................9

1. Comparing warehouse worker earnings in counties with and without Amazon fulfillment

centers suggests that Amazon pays less than other warehouse employers..............................9

a. Amazon predominantly locates its fulfillment centers in higher-earnings counties. ...... 9

b. When compared to other high-earnings U.S. counties that also have warehouses,

high-earnings Amazon counties show substantially lower earnings for warehouse

workers. ............................................................................................................................................................ 9

c. In the counties where Amazon operates, the gap between warehouse worker

earnings and middle-income earnings is wider than in other counties. ................................ 13

2. Comparing warehouse workers’ earnings in counties before and after Amazon’s arrival

suggests that Amazon pays less than other warehouse employers, making middle-income

earnings further out of reach for warehouse workers. ............................................................14

a. Before Amazon’s arrival, warehouse workers in future Amazon counties had

earnings that were on par with other comparable counties. .................................................... 14

b. Before Amazon arrived, warehouse workers in Amazon counties earned much

closer to average earnings for all workers in those counties. .................................................... 15

III. Amazon relies on Black workers, particularly Black women, to work in its warehouses. ......17

IV. Amazon has the means to greatly improve the livelihoods of its U.S. front-line workers if it

prioritizes fair pay for them over profit, acquisitions, real estate purchases, and global

expansion................................................................................................................................19

V. Recommendations ..................................................................................................................21

VI. Struggling to Make Ends Meet: Amazon Warehouse Worker Testimonies ...........................23

VII. Methodology ..........................................................................................................................26

Acknowledgements .........................................................................................................................32

Endnotes..........................................................................................................................................33

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

Introduction

“Amazon takes up a bigger part of my life than anything else, yet

every day is a struggle to make ends meet for my family…And it’s

not just my family having trouble—sometimes I share food with my

coworkers because otherwise they wouldn’t eat. My husband and I

wait in line for hours at the food pantry every Monday.”

—Wendy Taylor, employee at STL8, an Amazon fulfillment center in Missouri

“Warehouse workers are the assembly-line workers of

contemporary capitalism.”

—Steven Vallas, Sociologist, Northeastern University

“Back in the 1970s, we talked about autoworkers as the backbone

of the American middle class. Sure, the jobs involved hard labor,

but people were proud to do it. And on the whole, with the steady

pay and generous benefits and union protections, a job at a Ford or

General Motors plant was a pretty good one. The same can't be

said of a job at an Amazon fulfillment center.”

—Aki Ito, writing for Business Insider

“We are going to be Earth’s Best Employer.”

—Jeff Bezos, founder and former CEO of Amazon.com in his 2020 letter to

shareholders

Over the last twenty years, Amazon's meteoric growth and increasing power has touched

myriad aspects of life in the U.S.

The company’s reach as an employer has spread steadily

across the country and Amazon now ranks as the country’s second largest private sector

employer.

Amazon employs about one million people, without even counting the more than

one hundred thousand drivers in its vast delivery networks whom it employs indirectly

through intermediaries.

As it has enlarged its operations, Amazon has relied

disproportionately on Black workers and on Black women in particular—the latter of whom

are the largest demographic group within the company’s frontline workforce—to power its

warehouses.

With Amazon’s growing economic dominance and the decline of many other

kinds of employment opportunities in recent decades, workers in many areas have described

finding diminishing job options outside of Amazon.

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

As the U.S. struggles with the disappearance of middle-class jobs in recent decades, some have

pointed to a potential role for Amazon in shoring up well-paid employment opportunities in

this country.

These include former President Barack Obama, who visited an Amazon

warehouse in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on his “Middle Class Jobs and Opportunities Tour,” to

speak about the role that Amazon could play in building a good jobs economy in the U.S.

This proposition is not far-fetched given that many warehouse jobs in the U.S.—especially

unionized ones—have allowed workers to build careers and attain a relatively solid standard

of living. The jobs may require rigorous physical exertion, but people are compensated for

that work. As one long-time warehouse worker in a unionized grocery warehouse not

operated by Amazon said, “[In] [t]his job, you bust your butt, but you get paid.”

As an employer, Amazon has frequently touted high pay and quality jobs at

its warehouses.

However, critics have challenged that claim, pointing out

that Amazon jobs are a far cry from the unionized warehouse jobs that

offer workers middle-income earnings and opportunities for

advancement—jobs that are increasingly under threat as Amazon extends

its dominance in multiple sectors of the U.S. economy including

warehousing and logistics.

Major national publications have published

recent headlines that include “Amazon Has Turned a Middle-Class

Warehouse Career into a McJob” and “Amazon Says It Pays Alabama

Workers Well; Other Local Employers Pay More.”

Our focus in this report

Within this context, our report aims to shed light on two primary questions. First, how does

Amazon’s pay compare to other warehouse employers? And, second, how far is Amazon’s pay

for warehouse workers from middle-income compensation? Through our analysis, we aim to

better understand Amazon pay for warehouse workers within the context of the broader U.S.

warehousing industry, and within the localities where it operates by comparing four sets of

earnings numbers:

 average earnings for warehouse workers in the counties where Amazon operates its

largest warehouses, or “fulfillment centers”;

 average earnings for warehouse workers in counties where Amazon does not operate

fulfillment centers;

 average earnings for all workers in the counties where Amazon operates fulfillment

centers; and,

 average earnings for all workers in counties where Amazon does not operate such

warehouses.

For the remainder of this report, we refer to counties that have Amazon fulfillment centers as

“Amazon counties,” and those who do not as “non-Amazon counties.” We also examine

Amazon’s public filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to illustrate the

scale of the company’s resources in relation to the wages it chooses to pay its warehouse

workers.

Amazon jobs are a far

cry from the unionized

warehouse jobs that

offer workers middle-

income earnings and

opportunities for

advancement.

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

Not a leader in wages

In September of 2023, amid growing momentum in worker organizing in Amazon facilities, ,

Amazon announced an increase in its minimum starting pay for warehouse workers to $17 an

hour, with raises capped after three years.

While a good step, $17 does not meet the cost of

living in much of the country. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, on

average, U.S. workers need to earn at least $23.67 per hour to afford rent on a modest 1-

bedroom apartment and to pay for other basic necessities such as food, clothing and

transportation.

The cost of living is significantly higher in many metro areas where Amazon

operates warehouses.

Moreover, a $17 wage does not truly represent a raise when taking

inflation into account—today, $17 is worth less in real terms than Amazon’s prior raise to $16

in 2022. Indeed, the purchasing power of $16 in 2022 was the equivalent of $17.28 in

September 2023.

Further, instead of indexing raises to inflation, Amazon takes steps to the

contrary and caps pay raises after three years for hourly employees, by design, as a way to

foster high turnover and incentivize workers to leave.

Nor does a $17 starting wage rate make Amazon a leader in the wage policy arena or in the

warehousing industry. An increasing number of states and localities have adopted or are

considering adopting minimum wages in the $18 to $25 range; and several localities have also

reached or surpassed an $18 per hour minimum wage as a result of indexing their wage floors

to inflation.

This summer, union workers at UPS, one of the largest warehouse employers in

the U.S., have negotiated pay increases that will result in pay ranging from $21 to $49 an

hour.

Figure 1.

Source: Labor Notes, reprinted with permission. These figures reflect Amazon pay rates before the raise announced

on September 18, 2023.

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

The differences in pay for warehouse workers at UPS under the new contract and at Amazon

are stark as shown below in a comparison of projected pay levels for warehouse workers in

the St. Louis, Missouri, area in the next five years, from the publication Labor Notes (See

Figure 1).

In the last year, Amazon workers around the country have escalated demands that Amazon

raise pay, and in some cases have been successful in winning gains. For example, last

November, Missouri workers at the 3,000-worker fulfillment center STL8 referenced in the

above chart, went on strike to demand higher wages. In response, the company raised wages

for part-timers.

However, even with recent raises, Amazon’s pay is still inadequate by many

measures, as we will detail later in this report. Moreover, hourly pay rates may not give a

complete picture of take-home pay for Amazon workers given problems with uneven and

inadequate hours, high rates of lost work time resulting from workplace injuries, and high

rates of turnover reflecting both quits and fires.

Amazon can afford to pay its workers much more

As one of the most valuable companies in the world, Amazon can more than afford to raise

pay for its warehouse workers, having seen record profits in 2020 and 2021 and having

already more than recovered in 2023 from a minor dip in profit in 2022.

However, it has

prioritized spending its vast resources on pursuing expansion and greater market dominance

both in the U.S. and globally. Since 2020, this has included tens of billions of dollars in

acquisitions of companies such as MGM Studios and One Medical.

Between 2020 and 2022,

it almost doubled its U.S. real estate assets, in many places leading to over-capacity, which it

has since had to correct.

Moreover, Amazon has been found to be less generous than other

employers during a period of record profits in the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic. A

recent Brookings study ranked Amazon among the least generous towards workers with the

extra profits garnered between 2020 and 2021, next to comparable employers.

Wide-ranging job quality problems

Finally, while our report focuses on pay for Amazon warehouse workers, there are many

other job quality issues that are equally pressing for Amazon workers. Beyond the problem of

inadequate pay, Amazon warehouse workers bear numerous other hidden costs from the

low-quality jobs in which they toil—including illegal workplace hazards that lead to injuries,

disabilities, lost work time, stress, and psychological tolls.

Many of these workers have

described grueling jobs that leave their bodies spent.

Prior studies based on NELP research

have also revealed the astronomical rates of worker turnover at Amazon, which in and of

itself strongly suggests job quality problems.

While raising pay would represent an

important improvement for Amazon workers, the company must also address these and other

issues raised by workers.

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

II.

Key Findings

1. Comparing warehouse worker earnings in counties with and without Amazon

fulfillment centers suggests that Amazon pays less than other warehouse

employers.

While Amazon does not disclose detailed wage or earnings information for its workforce, it is

possible to gain insight into pay at Amazon warehouses by looking at county-level data on

warehouse worker earnings compiled by the Census Bureau through its Quarterly Workforce

Indicators dataset.

Because Amazon employs more warehouse workers than any other

company in the country, and its largest warehouses—which it refers to as “fulfillment

centers”—can employ thousands of workers, Amazon employees’ earnings can factor heavily

into average earnings data for warehouse workers in those counties and can provide insight

into Amazon pay rates.

For example, a 2020 Bloomberg analysis showed that in the counties where Amazon has

opened its largest facilities, average industry compensation slips by more than 6% during the

facility’s first two years, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Those

findings point to the possibility that Amazon’s presence is large enough that its pay rates

would be reflected in county averages of warehouse worker pay and that Amazon’s pay

practices may have influence over the wages of other employers including warehouse

employers in the area. Our research follows that work, and we offer three major findings in

this section.

a. Amazon predominantly locates its fulfillment centers in higher-earnings

counties.

First, to understand how Amazon’s pay might impact average warehouse wages in a county,

we investigate the kinds of counties in which Amazon chooses to locate fulfillment centers.

The vast majority (78 percent) of Amazon counties fall in the top 20

percentile of U.S.

counties with respect to average earnings for all workers. The Amazon counties in this group

range in average monthly earnings for all workers from $4,119 in Pottawattamie, Iowa, to

$10,284 in Somerset County, New Jersey, with a median among counties of $5,179.

Comparing average earnings for workers in all industries in counties with Amazon fulfillment

centers and other counties, we find that average earnings for all workers tend to be higher in

the places where Amazon operates.

This is consistent with prior studies that have found

that Amazon chooses to locate fulfillment centers in proximity to higher-income consumer

markets.

Among Amazon counties, we found that the median of monthly average earnings

for all workers in all industries is 25 percent higher than among non-Amazon counties that

also had warehouses—or $4,756, compared to $3,850.

b. When compared to other high-earnings U.S. counties that also have

warehouses, high-earnings Amazon counties show substantially lower

earnings for warehouse workers.

Second, as mentioned earlier, 78 percent of Amazon counties are in the category of U.S.

counties that have warehouses and also fall in the top 20

percentile of U.S. counties in

average earnings for all workers. Zeroing in on this group of counties provides an “apples to

apples” basis for comparing warehouse worker earnings in Amazon counties to similarly high

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

earnings non-Amazon counties.

This is a group of 641 counties and Amazon operates

fulfillment centers in 123 of those counties.

Comparing Amazon and non-Amazon counties within this group (i.e., the 123 counties with

Amazon fulfillment centers and the 518 U.S. counties that also have warehouses and are

comparable in terms of average earnings for all workers), we find that the average for

warehouse worker earnings in high-earnings Amazon warehouse counties is 18

percent lower than in non-Amazon high-earnings counties—or roughly $822 less a

month in pay.

This is especially troubling because even among this group of top 20

percentile counties,

Amazon counties actually have higher average earnings for all workers than the non-Amazon

counties (See Table 2 on page 27). Yet, warehouse worker earnings are still lower on average

in Amazon counties relative to non-Amazon counties.

As a further comparison, we also analyzed earnings for all 1,500+ counties with warehouses

across the U.S., and we found that on average warehouse workers in Amazon counties

earn less than warehouse workers in non-Amazon warehouse counties in the rest of

the country, not just high-earnings counties.

We find that monthly average earnings

for warehouse workers are on average 12 percent lower in Amazon counties as

compared to all other U.S. counties with warehouses (See Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau Quarterly Workforce Indicators, Q1 2022. Includes counties with overall total employment of at least 2,000.

-12%

-18%

-20%

-18%

-16%

-14%

-12%

-10%

-8%

-6%

-4%

-2%

All Amazon counties vs. non-Amazon

counties

High-earnings Amazon counties vs. high-

earnings non-Amazon counties

Average percent difference in

warehouse worker earnings

Warehouse Workers in Amazon Counties Make Less

than Warehouse Workers in Other Comparable

Counties

Average Percent Difference Between Warehouse Workers'

Earnings in Amazon Counties and Other U.S. Counties With

Warehouses, Q1 2022

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It is important to note that these differences in earnings may reflect not only Amazon’s own

wages, but the effect of Amazon’s pay rates on other employers in the area. Other studies have

suggested that Amazon’s outsized presence and large-scale hiring may give it a wage-setting

role among employers in a local area, as it drives up competition for workers.

However,

rather than raise the floor, Amazon’s impact on local warehouse wages in particular has been

shown to be negative or negligible.

Additionally, our findings on lower warehouse worker monthly earnings in Amazon counties

relative to non-Amazon counties may also suggest that the hourly pay rates advertised by

Amazon do not necessarily give a complete picture of true take home pay for Amazon

workers. While it is outside the scope of our study, it is important to note that certain

characteristics of Amazon jobs such as uneven and inadequate hours, high rates of lost work

time related to workplace injuries, and high rates of turnover (reflecting both voluntary and

involuntary separations) are all factors that may be reflected in lower monthly earnings.

Photo: Athena Coalition

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

Stark differences in living standards

Differences in earnings among warehouse workers can result in dramatically different

standards of living. For example, one warehouse worker who has worked for 19 years at a

warehouse that stocks groceries for a supermarket chain that is not operated by Amazon

describes a job that is physically strenuous but is rewarded with high wages that can support

a good standard of living, including being able to afford to purchase a home and enjoy basic

leisure activities such as vacations and restaurant meals. Bloomberg includes this profile of

him in a 2020 article:

Joey Alvarado, 42, makes almost $30 an hour moving boxes filled with pet food, shampoo,

canned goods and other items sold by Stater Bros. Markets, a southern California supermarket

chain. His wife stays home with their three children, and the family eats out twice a week, has a

boat called Penny Lane and a travel trailer. They vacation on Lake Havasu and the Colorado

River. They’re buying a 2,000-square-foot home on half an acre…Alvarado belongs to the

Teamsters Local 63, which he sees as the difference between what he is paid and what Amazon

workers are paid. He has been on the job 19 years and plans to remain. He doesn’t pay any

premiums for medical benefits for himself and his family members and has a pension.

By contrast, with Amazon’s current pay scale starting at $17 an hour with raises capped after

three years, many Amazon workers report struggling to meet basic expenses.

For example, Karen Crawford, a former teacher and bank worker is employed at ATL6, an

Amazon fulfillment center in the Atlanta metro area in Fulton County, Georgia. Fulton County

is a high-earnings county, with average earnings for all workers falling in the top 20th

percentile of counties with warehouses in the U.S. Yet Karen makes just $18.40 an hour at her

job. She describes her struggle to make ends meet (See Section VI for her full testimony):

“I make $18.40 an hour and work a minimum of 32 hours a week,

which is not nearly enough to pay for basic necessities – like

housing, groceries, utilities, my 10-mile commute, and daily

expenses – let alone pay tuition for my daughter. I am currently

experiencing homelessness, my daughter and I jumping from

couch to couch until we can make enough money to afford a

place.”

Wendy Taylor works at STL8, an Amazon fulfillment center in St. Charles County, Missouri.

That county is also in the top 20

percentile of U.S. counties with respect to earnings for all

workers. Average monthly earnings for all workers in that county are $4,742. By contrast,

warehouse workers there only average $2,455 a month in pay.

She shares her story,

describing similar struggles (See Section VI for her full testimony):

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

“My husband had to stop working after a heart attack, and the $18

an hour Amazon pays me is not enough to cover our bills.

My commute to work is over 20 miles each way. I share a car with

my husband as well. His doctors’ visits, along with seeing his

cardiologist, make keeping gas in our car very costly. It means we

make impossible choices about whether to pay the electric bill or

buy food; pay the mortgage or buy gas.”

These stories underscore the devastating human consequences of Amazon’s chronic

underpayment of warehouse workers across the country.

c. In the counties where Amazon operates fulfillment centers, the gap

between warehouse worker earnings and middle-income earnings is

wider than in other counties.

Above, we observed that warehouse workers in Amazon counties make less relative to their

counterparts in other U.S. counties, especially high-earnings counties with warehouses. Now

we turn our attention to how their earnings compare relative to the average earnings for all

workers in the counties where they work. In other words, how close are warehouse workers

in Amazon counties to a middle-income standard?

We find that where Amazon operates, warehouse workers’ earnings are substantially below

averages for all workers’ earnings for those same counties. Warehouse workers in Amazon

counties had earnings on average of 26 percent less each month than the average

monthly earnings for all workers in those counties. By contrast, in all 1,400+ other U.S.

warehouse counties that do not have Amazon fulfillment centers, warehouse workers

make five percent more than the average earnings for all workers in those counties

(See Figure 3).

In high-earnings Amazon counties (top 20

percentile for average

earnings for all workers), this difference was even more stark.

Warehouse workers in high-earnings Amazon counties had earnings on

average of 30 percent less each month than the average monthly

earnings for all workers in those counties (See Figure 3).

And in the 518

other high-earnings U.S. counties in which other warehouse employers

operate, but in which Amazon does not have fulfillment centers, the gap

was much smaller, with warehouse workers on average making about 8

percent less than average earnings for all workers in those counties (See

Figure 3).

The picture that emerges from these data is that warehouse jobs

are middle-income jobs or at least closer to middle-income jobs in most of the

U.S., except in the counties where Amazon operates fulfillment centers.

The picture that

emerges from these

data is that warehouse

jobs are middle

income jobs or at least

closer to middle

income jobs in most of

the U.S., except in the

counties where

Amazon operates

fulfillment centers.

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

2. Comparing warehouse workers’ earnings in counties before and after Amazon’s

arrival suggests that Amazon pays less than other warehouse employers, making

middle-income earnings further out of reach for warehouse workers.

As mentioned above, previous studies have shown that when Amazon begins operations in a

county, warehouse workers’ earnings decline.

We seek to gain further clarity on how

Amazon’s pay rates have changed average warehouse earnings in the counties where it has

fulfillment centers by examining data from Q1 of 2005 for those same counties, before they

began hosting Amazon warehouses. Before 2005, there were only three Amazon fulfillment

centers in the entire country. Amazon began operating six more in 2005 and has continued to

add new facilities around the country in the intervening years, reaching a current total of

more than 300 fulfillment centers.

We have two main findings in this category, which are detailed below.

a. Before Amazon’s arrival, warehouse workers in future Amazon counties

had earnings that were on par with other comparable counties.

First, it’s important to note that in 2005, these future Amazon counties were relatively higher-

earnings counties, as they are today.

However, in contrast to what we find in the most

recent data from 2022, in 2005 there was no statistically significant difference between

warehouse worker earnings in future Amazon counties and other warehouse counties. As one

Figure 3.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau Quarterly Workforce Indicators, Q1 2022. Includes counties with overall total employment of at least 2,000.

-26%

-30%

-8%

-35%

-30%

-25%

-20%

-15%

-10%

-5%

10%

Within all counties with

Amazon fulfillment centers

Within high-earnings

counties with Amazon

fulfillment centers

Within all counties with

warehouses but no Amazon

fulfillment centers

Within high-earnings

counties with warehouses

but no Amazon fulfillment

centers

Average % difference between warehouse

and all workers' earnings within a county

Warehouse Jobs in the U.S. are Close to Middle-Income Except in

Amazon Counties

Difference Between Warehouse Workers' Average Monthly Earnings

and All Workers' Average Monthly Earnings, Q1 2022

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

might expect, warehouse worker earnings tracked earnings for all workers in a county.

higher earnings counties, warehouse workers also earned more and vice versa. As we saw in

our preceding analysis, that is no longer the case, with warehouse workers in Amazon

counties earning less than their counterparts in other counties, especially when comparing

higher-earnings counties.

b. Before Amazon arrived, warehouse workers in Amazon counties earned

much closer to average earnings for all workers in those counties.

Above, we have seen above that warehouse worker earnings in Amazon counties are far

below average earnings for all workers in those counties. However, that was not the case

before Amazon began expanding its fulfillment center network in 2005. Examining earnings

data from those counties in 2005 before they became Amazon host counties shows that

warehouse workers earned much closer to the average earnings for all workers in those same

counties.

As noted earlier, what we find is that in 2005, in the counties in which Amazon would

eventually build fulfillment centers by 2022, average earnings for all workers were higher

than in the counties in which Amazon would not build fulfillment centers, as is to be expected.

But in 2005, the gap between warehouse worker earnings and the average earnings for

all workers was much smaller in future Amazon counties than it is in 2022—about

negative 9 percent in 2005 as compared to negative 26 percent in 2022. By contrast,

these gaps did not change much in the 1,400+ other U.S. warehouse counties in our

sample (positive 3 percent in 2005 and positive 5 percent in 2022).

Photo: Athena Coalition

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

The difference is even starker when comparing high-earnings Amazon counties to other high-

earnings warehouse counties. In 2005, the gap between warehouse worker earnings and

the average earnings for all workers was much smaller in future high-earnings Amazon

counties than it was in 2022—about negative 10 percent in 2005 as compared to

negative 30 percent in 2022. For the other high-earnings counties with warehouses in

2005, there was no change in this gap (negative 8 percent as compared to negative 8

percent).

In sum, what we have seen by comparing Amazon counties with non-Amazon counties both

before and after Amazon’s arrival is that there is strong evidence of Amazon’s

underpayment of its warehouse workers in comparison to other warehouse

employers. There is also strong evidence that Amazon’s pay is far from sufficient for

middle-class earnings to be within reach for Amazon workers.

Figure 4.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau Quarterly Workforce Indicators, Q1 2022 and Q1 2005. Includes counties with overall total employment of at least 2,000.

-9%

-26%

-10%

-30%

-8% -8%

-35%

-30%

-25%

-20%

-15%

-10%

-5%

10%

Q1 2005 Q1 2022

Average % difference between warehouse and all

workers' earnings within a county

Before Amazon Arrived, Warehouse Workers in Future Amazon

Counties Made Closer to Middle-Income Earnings

Difference Between Warehouse Workers' Monthly Earnings and All Workers'

Average Monthly Earnings in Counties Where Amazon Operates Fulfillment Center

Within all counties with 2022 Amazon fulfillment centers

Within high-earnings counties with 2022 Amazon fulfillment centers

Within all counties with warehouses but no 2022 Amazon fulfillment centers

Within high-earnings counties with warehouses but no 2022 Amazon fulfillment centers

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

III.

Amazon relies on Black workers, particularly Black women, to

work in its warehouses.

We now turn our attention to who it is that works in Amazon’s warehouses. The latest

disclosures from Amazon to the Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission (EEOC)

show the company relies disproportionately on Black workers, especially Black women. for

its operations. The majority of Amazon’s workers fall under the EEOC’s “laborers and helpers”

designation, representing 68 percent of Amazon’s total U.S. workforce. In the rest of this

report, we refer to these workers as “front-line workers.” Amazon reported 761,568 workers

in this category in 2021, the latest filing it has made public.

This number does not include

delivery drivers which Amazon employs through intermediaries or as independent

contractors, even though they may not meet the criteria for independent contractor

classification.

Of the workers that Amazon reports are front-line, 32 percent are Black, 28

percent are white, and 27 percent are “Hispanic” of all races (Figure 5).

Black women, in

particular, represent the largest share of workers in the “laborers and helpers” category.

More than one in six Amazon workers in this category are Black women.

These workforce figures suggest that Black and Latinx workers bear the greatest impact of

Amazon’s low relative pay in the warehouse sector and that Amazon’s pay policies may

reinforce and perpetuate labor market inequities across the U.S.

Figure 5.

Source: Amazon.com, Inc. Consolidated EEO-1 report, 2021. Note: The term “Amazon’s Front-line Workforce” refers to employees that

Amazon reports in the “Laborers and Helpers” category.

32%

28%

27%

13%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

Black White Latinx Other

Amazon's Front-line Workforce by Race/Ethnicity

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

Table 1. Amazon Front-Line Workers Ranked by

Demographic Group

As Share of Amazon’s

Front-line Workforce

Black women

17%

Black men

15%

White men

15%

Latinas

14%

Latinos

13%

White women

12%

Other women

Other men

Source: Amazon.com, Inc. Consolidated EEO-1 report, 2021. Note: The term

“Amazon’s Front-line Workforce” refers to employees that Amazon reports in

the “Laborers and Helpers” category. Note: Totals may not add up to 100 due to

rounding.

Photo: Athena Coalition

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

IV.

Amazon has the means to greatly improve the livelihoods of its

U.S. front-line workers if it prioritizes fair pay for them over

profit, acquisitions, real estate purchases, and global expansion.

In recent years, Amazon has reported record revenues and profits and has also funneled

substantial resources into various expansion efforts—including acquiring businesses such as

MGM and One Medical and enlarging its real estate footprint in the U.S. and globally.

Many

of these actions have faced scrutiny both in the U.S. and abroad.

Examining the company’s expenditures in recent years as detailed in its filings with the

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reveals how it has prioritized rapid and relentless

expansion over sustainable pay for the workers who have made Amazon’s explosive growth

possible. Below we offer some hypothetical scenarios with the aim of illustrating the scale of

Amazon’s available resources in relation to the pay it offers its U.S. front-line workers—those

that Amazon categorizes as “laborers and helpers” in its filings to the EEOC.

In 2021, the

latest filing that Amazon has disclosed publicly, those workers totaled 761,568.

1. Using just one tenth of its annual profit, Amazon could pay each U.S. front-line

worker an additional $2,225 a year, or nearly $200 more per month. Amazon

saw record profits in 2020 and 2021. It experienced a slight loss in 2022. Overall, it

averaged $17.3 billion in annual profits over those three years. Just a modest one

tenth of this annual profit could provide each of the U.S. workers that the company

counts in the “laborers and helpers” category with an additional $2,225 a year.

This

could go a long way to helping workers afford healthier groceries for their children,

save for a down payment for a house or car, or pay for heat in the winter and air

conditioning in the summer. Moreover, Amazon’s earnings reports so far in 2023

show that it has already more than recovered from its slight loss in 2022.

2. These profits have driven increases in Amazon’s stock price which

have enriched shareholders, especially the largest shareholders such

as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos who owns more than 10 percent of

Amazon stock. This came into sharp relief during the pandemic when

record profits sent stock prices soaring. A recent Brookings report

states that, “between January 2020 and October 2021, Amazon’s

shareholders grew 84% wealthier…the additional wealth for

Amazon’s shareholders was 177 times greater than the additional

pay that employees earned.”

In recent months, this trend has continued as Amazon has beat profit

expectations in 2023 and shareholders have reaped the benefits.

After Amazon stock prices increased 11 percent in response to

high profits in the second quarter of this year, Jeff Bezos’ wealth

increased 12 billion dollars in just one day in August 2023. This

amount could fund a $15,000 bonus for every front-line Amazon

worker in the U.S.

3. The equivalent of money spent on major acquisitions in 2022

and 2023 could fund a $16,000 one-time bonus for each U.S.

After Amazon stock

prices increased 11

percent in response to

high profits in the

second quarter of this

year, Jeff Bezos’ wealth

increased 12 billion

dollars in just one day in

August 2023. This

amount could fund a

$15,000 bonus for every

front-line Amazon

worker in the U.S.

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

front-line worker. Amazon used cash on hand to make large acquisitions in recent

years including the purchase of MGM studios ($8.5 billion, March 2022) and One

Medical ($3.9 billion, February 2023).

Those purchases totaled over 12 billion

dollars, which is the equivalent of over $16,000 for each of Amazon’s front-line

workers in the U.S. Even after these major purchases, Amazon continues to be able to

afford all-cash acquisitions and has indicated it intends to complete its pending

purchase of the consumer robot company iRobot (~$1.7 billion) with cash on hand.

4. Amazon almost doubled its property and equipment assets in North America

between 2020 and 2022, increasing them from $55 billion to $90 billion.

Those

assets grew an average of 30.3 billion dollars a year in net additions to property and

equipment. This growth in assets is reflected in high levels of spending on capital

expenditures (spending related to acquiring and maintaining physical assets such as

property and equipment), with the company reporting an average of $49.6 billion

dollars a year in capital expenditures from 2020 to 2022.

By reducing capital

expenditures by just 5 percent annually, Amazon could pay an additional

$3,254 per year to its U.S. front-line workers. From 2020 to 2022, the company

reported that these expenditures have included expansion of both its fulfillment

operations and Amazon Web Services (AWS) operations, both domestically and

globally, but with the majority of expenditures in North America. The company

indicates in its Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings that it intends to

continue this level of capital expenditure in the future, suggesting that it anticipates

having sufficient resources to do so.

5. Amazon has spent $156 billion on expanding operations to Europe since 2010, which

amounts to about 13 billion dollars a year.

It announced in May 2023 that it plans

to continue that expansion.

With one quarter of money it has spent on average

each year since 2010 to expand operations in Europe, Amazon could increase

pay for each of its U.S. front-line workers by $4,268 each year.

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

Recommendations

“We need change and a pay increase to match the work we put in.

Forty cents every 6 months is not helping in today’s economy with

the cost of living steadily on the rise.”

—Nathaniel H., Amazon warehouse worker and member of Philadelphia

Amazonians United

“We won historic raises in our new contract at UPS by organizing

with our coworkers to demand what we deserve. I come from a

struggle with a low pay rate, often going broke within hours just to

pay bills, eating inexpensive meals, and seeking assistance to cover

expenses. Now with the new contract, I make $21.50/hour, and I

am able to provide more support to my family, enjoy better Friday

meals, save up to buy a car, and avoid the unpleasant experience

of taking smelly buses. Now, I will be able to reduce my

transportation time from 45 minutes to 30 minutes to get home.

These companies make billions and can afford to pay us enough to

afford food and a roof over our heads. Every warehouse worker

should have what we have, all we have to do is fight for it.”

—Aldo Navarette, part-time UPS warehouse worker and member of Teamsters

Local 804

Below, we offer some steps that Amazon can take to live up to its promise of high-quality

employment, and to play a leadership role in fostering economic opportunity commensurate

with its current size and power in the U.S. economy.

a. Raise pay. Raise pay for all warehouse workers by at least 25 percent, index

raises to the median wage for all U.S. workers, and end the 3-year pay raise cap.

As the second-largest private sector employer in the U.S. and the largest

warehouse employer, Amazon can be a standard bearer for fair pay.

b. Support workers right to organize. Amazon should adopt freedom of

association and neutrality policies to ensure that all workers who want to can

join unions without fear or interference. Amazon should also bargain in good

faith with its unionized employees.

c. Adopt paid time off policies. Provide workers with a minimum of 72 hours of

paid sick leave, and a minimum of 12 weeks of medical and family leave.

Especially given the high documented rates of lost work time resulting from job-

related injuries experienced by Amazon workers, providing fair and adequate

paid time off is imperative.

At a time when more federal,

state and local

lawmakers are pushing for stronger earned sick leave and other paid time off

policies, Amazon has a chance to be a leader in the private sector.

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

d. Release detailed pay and racial equity data. In response to shareholder

pressure, Amazon announced in 2022 that it is conducting a racial equity audit to

evaluate any disparate racial impacts on its U.S. hourly employees.

Any

meaningful audit of Amazon’s racial impacts must include detailed breakdowns

of earnings, hours, and job titles by race, gender, and location.

e. Provide stable and predictable hours and schedules. Research increasingly

suggests that stable schedules not only benefit workers

but also employers, as

predictable schedules increase productivity and reduce worker errors.

Amazon’s adoption of fair scheduling practices would therefore benefit not only

its workforce but the company as well.

f. Address health and safety issues. Amazon must first begin by widely

implementing the ergonomics recommendations described in OSHA’s multiple

2023 citations of the company which detailed hazards in several Amazon

warehouses around the country.

g. Establish fairness and transparency in discipline. The company must also

provide greater transparency in its use of quotas, performance standards,

disciplinary protocols, and surveillance to reduce the climate of fear in the

workplace.

In addition, federal, state, and local policy makers have a critical role to play in

supporting Amazon workers’ efforts to improve pay and working conditions and

should consider doing the following:

a. Strengthen protections for workers’ right to organize unions and against

employer retaliation.

100

b. Adopt guaranteed paid leave laws.

101

c. Adopt fair scheduling laws.

102

d. Require employer pay disclosures disaggregated by race, gender, and

occupation.

103

e. Pass strong minimum wage laws that include indexing to the median wage

for all U.S. workers.

104

f. Repeal preemption laws to allow local governments to raise wages.

105

g. Establish ergonomics standards for the warehousing industry.

106

h. Regulate the use of electronic monitoring and surveillance, and pass quota

and disciplinary transparency laws.

107

i. Reform the merger review process to screen for labor market effects.

108

j. Separate Amazon’s major business lines into stand-alone firms to reduce

Amazon’s outsize power within the U.S economy.

109

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

VI.

Struggling to Make Ends Meet: Amazon Warehouse Worker

Testimonies

Karen Crawford, ATL6, East Point, Georgia, United for Respect

“My name is Karen Crawford and I’ve been working at ATL6 for 5 years. I’m a mother of 2

daughters and grandmother of 4 grandchildren. I’ve been in Atlanta all of my life and am proud to

call it home. I was a teacher for 5 years before Amazon, and before that I worked for Trust Bank

when it was SunTrust for 15 years and Bank of America for 10 years. At Amazon, I feel beyond

overworked and grossly underpaid. I make $18.40 an hour and work a minimum of 32 hours a

week, which is not nearly enough to pay for basic necessities – like housing, groceries, utilities, my

10-mile commute, and daily expenses – let alone pay tuition for my daughter. I am currently

experiencing homelessness, my daughter and I jumping from couch to couch until we can make

enough money to afford a place. Why am I struggling to afford housing when I work for a multi-

billion dollar corporation like Amazon? It doesn’t make any sense. That’s why I decided to organize

at my facility about a year ago with the help of United for Respect, because workers at Amazon

deserve a livable wage.”

110

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

Wendy Taylor, STL8, St. Peters, Missouri, STL8 Organizing Committee Member

“Amazon takes up a bigger part of my life than anything else, yet every day is a struggle to make

ends meet for my family. My husband had to stop working after a heart attack, and the $18 an

hour Amazon pays me is not enough to cover our bills.

My commute to work is over 20 miles each way. I share a car with my husband as well.

His doctors’ visits, along with seeing his cardiologist, make keeping gas in our car very costly. It

means we make impossible choices about whether to pay the electric bill or buy food; pay the

mortgage or buy gas. And it’s not just my family having trouble — sometimes I share food with my

coworkers because otherwise they wouldn’t eat.

My husband and I wait in line for hours at the food pantry every Monday, while Amazon’s chief

executives make millions of dollars off of our labor and are shielded from what we go through

every day to survive. That’s why I’m fighting for a union and joining my coworkers in demanding a

raise at Amazon.”

111

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

Nathaniel H., DJE3, Logan Township, NJ, Philadelphia Amazonians United

“Hi, my name is Nathaniel H. an Amazonian working out of DJE3. We work hard at our site but

unfortunately what we get paid does not reflect the work we are putting in. In a world where

everything has gone up from gas, groceries, rent, and even utilities, most of us are living paycheck

to paycheck and are forced to work a second job just to survive. Amazon is the #1 logistics

company in the world yet its workers get paid less than all of the other logistics companies that’s

out there. We need change and a pay increase to match the work we put in— .40 cents every 6

months is not helping in today’s economy with the cost of living steadily on the rise.”

112

Note: As of the beginning of September 2023, the wage scale at DJE3, where Nathaniel works

started at $18.50 with steps to $19.30, $20.10, and $20.90. Raises are capped after three years.

113

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

VII.

Methodology

The main dataset we used for this analysis is U.S. Census Bureau’s Quarterly Workforce

Indicators (QWI) from Q1 2005 and Q1 2022 (accessed August 3, 2023). The other

government dataset that provides county-level measurements of earnings broken down by

industry is the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW). The QCEW is much

more limited in the number of warehouse counties for which it has data available—about 500

counties as compared to over 1,700 counties in the QWI.

The QWI county-level data provide average monthly earnings for all workers in a county that

worked on the first day of a quarter by 4-digit NAICS industry code (EarnBeg). We chose to

use this variable because it is available for the largest number of counties in our analysis. As a

result, lower reported earnings may reflect the fact that workers don’t stay in the job for the

entire quarter. As such, it is possible that earnings in Amazon counties are lower because of

atypically large attrition and higher worker churn at Amazon facilities.

114

Additionally, it is

possible that earnings in Amazon counties are lower because of higher-than-average rates of

lost work time resulting from worker injuries.

115

The other earnings variable in the QWI is

“EarnS”, which measures earnings for workers who worked the entire quarter. However, this

variable is limited in its availability for the counties in our analysis.

The QWI earnings measure includes gross wages and salaries, bonuses, stock options, tips,

and other gratuities, and the value of meals and lodging, where supplied. It does not include

Old Age Survivor and Disability Insurance, health insurance, workers compensation,

unemployment insurance, private pensions, and welfare funds. These data provide overall

monthly earnings for workers, but not hourly pay or hours worked. Median earnings are not

made publicly available.

We did not annualize earnings data for the counties in our study because Amazon opened

many new facilities during 2022. Annualized earnings data over four quarters for these

counties would not produce accurate results because many facilities began operation in the

middle of the year. Q1 provides appropriate data for our study because it is unaffected by

factors such as end-of-year bonuses which may make earnings appear higher. Additionally,

monthly earnings for warehouse workers at Amazon and at other employers may be affected

by fluctuations in hours and seasonal employment during Amazon’s annual “Prime Day” sales

event and holiday shopping periods.

We looked at counties across that U.S. that reported earnings for warehouse workers in those

quarters and reported overall employment in all industries in the county of at least 2,000

people. Our full analytic sample includes 1,582 counties in Q1 2022. We then identified

counties in which there were Amazon fulfillment centers in operation in Q1 2022, for which

the Census Bureau publishes monthly earnings data. There were 158 such counties in Q1 and

Q4 respectively. This does not include counties that host other Amazon warehouses such as

sortation centers and delivery stations, but not fulfillment centers. We constructed the list of

Amazon fulfillment centers from a list of all facilities in operation that Amazon is required to

report to the Occupational Health and Safety Administration. We used a facilities list

maintained by logistics consulting firm MWPVL to identify the quarter in which facilities were

opened. Seven counties with Amazon fulfillment centers did not have earnings data available

in the QWI for Q1 2022 (See Appendix Table for full list of Amazon counties.)

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

For each county we calculated the percent difference between average monthly earnings for

all North American Industry Classification (NAICS) codes in each county and average earnings

for workers in the 4-digit NAICS code 4931 – Warehousing and Storage. We report an average

of those percent differences for counties with Amazon fulfillment centers and for those

without.

Note that the median and average percent differences we report are medians and averages

across counties. They are not weighted by employment levels within counties. As such, large

counties have the same weight as smaller counties. We believe this is appropriate because our

goal is to understand both the differences within counties and between counties to get a

picture of how warehouse workers across the country are faring within their particular local

contexts.

We conducted a series of simple OLS regression analyses to estimate the effect of the

presence of an Amazon fulfilment center on monthly warehouse worker earnings, average

earnings for all workers and on the difference between the two within a county. We did not

account for additional variables. This analysis showed that the presence of an Amazon

fulfillment center had statistically significant effects on warehouse worker earnings (at

p<0.05), and average earnings for all workers in a county (at p<0.001) and the difference

between those two measures within a county (at p<0.001).

To get an “apples to apples” comparison, we conducted the same analyses with a smaller

group of high-earnings counties. These are the 641 U.S. counties with warehouses that fall in

the top 20

percentile with respect to average earnings for all workers. This analysis showed

that the presence of an Amazon fulfillment center had statistically significant effects on

warehouse worker earnings (at p<0.05), and average earnings for all workers in a county (at

p<0.001) and the difference between those two measures within a county (at p<0.001). See

Table 2 below for details on this group of counties.

Table 2. U.S. Warehouse Counties in the Top 20

Percentile, Average Earnings for

All Workers, Q1 2022

Average Earnings for All Workers in All

Industries

Number of

Observations

Median

Mean

Standard

Deviation

Amazon Counties

123

$5,179

$5,480

$1,238

Non-Amazon Counties

518

$4,612

$5,057

$1,389

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Quarterly Workforce Indicators, Q1 2022. Includes counties with overall total employment of at least 2,000.

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

Appendix – U.S. Counties with Amazon Fulfillment Centers in Quarter 1 of

2022

Appendix Table 1. U.S. Counties with Amazon Fulfillment Centers, Q1 2022

County

State

Top 20th percentile (Average

earnings for all workers

employed in county)

Jefferson

Alabama

Limestone

Alabama

Maricopa

Arizona

Pima

Arizona

Pulaski*

Arkansas

n/a

Alameda

California

Fresno

California

Kern

California

Los Angeles

California

Riverside

California

Sacramento

California

San Bernardino

California

San Diego

California

San Joaquin

California

Solano

California

Stanislaus

California

Tulare

California

Ventura

California

Adams

Colorado

Denver

Colorado

El Paso

Colorado

Hartford

Connecticut

Middlesex

Connecticut

New Haven

Connecticut

New Castle

Delaware

Broward

Florida

Duval

Florida

Escambia

Florida

Hillsborough

Florida

Marion

Florida

Miami-Dade

Florida

Orange

Florida

Palm Beach

Florida

Polk

Florida

Volusia

Florida

Bibb

Georgia

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Cobb

Georgia

Columbia

Georgia

Coweta

Georgia

Douglas

Georgia

Fulton

Georgia

Gwinnett

Georgia

Jackson

Georgia

Canyon

Idaho

Cook

Illinois

DuPage

Illinois

Lake

Illinois

Madison

Illinois

St. Clair

Illinois

Will

Illinois

Allen

Indiana

Boone

Indiana

Clark

Indiana

Hancock

Indiana

Hendricks

Indiana

Johnson

Indiana

Marion

Indiana

Polk

Iowa

Pottawattamie

Iowa

Johnson

Kansas

Sedgwick

Kansas

Wyandotte

Kansas

Boone

Kentucky

Bullitt

Kentucky

Fayette

Kentucky

Taylor

Kentucky

Lafayette

Louisiana

Baltimore

Maryland

Baltimore

Maryland

Cecil

Maryland

Howard

Maryland

Washington

Maryland

Bristol

Massachusetts

Plymouth

Massachusetts

Kent*

Michigan

n/a

Macomb*

Michigan

n/a

Oakland*

Michigan

n/a

Wayne*

Michigan

n/a

Dakota

Minnesota

Hennepin

Minnesota

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Scott

Minnesota

DeSoto*

Mississippi

n/a

Marshall County*

Mississippi

n/a

Greene

Missouri

Platte

Missouri

St. Charles

Missouri

Clark

Nevada

Sarpy

Nevada

Washoe

Nevada

Burlington

New Jersey

Gloucester

New Jersey

Mercer

New Jersey

Middlesex

New Jersey

Passaic

New Jersey

Salem

New Jersey

Somerset

New Jersey

Union

New Jersey

Bernalillo

New Mexico

Orange

New York

Rensselaer

New York

Richmond

New York

Cabarrus

North Carolina

Forsyth

North Carolina

Mecklenburg

North Carolina

Wake

North Carolina

Cass

North Dakota

Cuyahoga

Ohio

Franklin

Ohio

Hamilton

Ohio

Madison

Ohio

Summit

Ohio

Warren

Ohio

Wood

Ohio

Cleveland

Oklahoma

Tulsa

Oklahoma

Marion

Oregon

Multnomah

Oregon

Allegheny

Pennsylvania

Berks

Pennsylvania

Cumberland

Pennsylvania

Lackawanna

Pennsylvania

Lehigh

Pennsylvania

Luzerne

Pennsylvania

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Monroe

Pennsylvania

Northampton

Pennsylvania

York

Pennsylvania

Lexington

South Carolina

Spartanburg

South Carolina

Bradley

Tennessee

Davidson

Tennessee

Hamilton

Tennessee

Rutherford

Tennessee

Shelby

Tennessee

Wilson

Tennessee

Bexar

Texas

Dallas

Texas

El Paso

Texas

Fort Bend

Texas

Guadalupe

Texas

Harris

Texas

Hays

Texas

Kaufman

Texas

McLennan

Texas

Tarrant

Texas

Travis

Texas

Waller

Texas

Salt Lake

Utah

Chesterfield

Virgina

Dinwiddie

Virgina

Frederick

Virgina

Prince George

Virgina

Richmond

Virgina

Suffolk

Virgina

Fairfax

Virginia

Loudoun

Virginia

King

Washington

Pierce

Washington

Snohomish

Washington

Spokane

Washington

Thurston

Washington

Kenosha

Wisconsin

Milwaukee

Wisconsin

Rock

Wisconsin

Waukesha

Wisconsin

Source: Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Injury Tracking Application and U.S. Census Bureau, Quarterly Workforce

Indicators, Q1, 2022. Includes all facilities that Amazon self-reported in NAICS code 493110 in the year 2022, minus facilities that began

operations after Q1 as tracked by logistics research firm MWPVL. Asterisk denotes that earnings data are unavailable for county.

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Karen Crawford, Nathaniel H., Aldo Navarette and Wendy

Taylor for generously sharing their personal experiences. We extend our gratitude to Mona

Abhari (United for Respect), Diego Bleifuss Prados (United for Respect), LaTwanya Davis

(Missouri Workers Center), Sasha Hammad (Athena Coalition), Palavi Rao (Philadelphia Jobs

with Justice), Devan Spear (Philadelphia Jobs with Justice), and Les Stitt (Missouri Workers

Center) for their work in gathering and documenting the warehouse workers’ stories

included this report. We are grateful to Aaron Brenner, Diego Bleifuss Prados, Brian Callaci,

Tommy Carden, Ryan Gerety, Beth Gutelius, Sasha Hammad, Eric Hoyt, Katy Milani, Sanjay

Pinto, and Ben Zipperer for their feedback on a rough draft of the report. We would also like

to thank our NELP colleagues Maya Pinto, Mitchell Hirsch, Paul Sonn, Judy Conti, and Cathy

Ruckelshaus for their review, feedback, and contributions to this report.

Photo: United for Respect

ATL6 Associates organizing with United for Respect prepare to deliver

a petition to management asking for a $5 wage increase.

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

Endnotes

Jason Del Rey, “The Amazonification of the American workforce,” Vox, April 21, 2022,

https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22977660/amazon-warehouses-work-injuries-

retail-labor

; Todd Bishop, “Analysis: New jobs numbers show where Amazon has been

adding and shedding U.S. workers,” GeekWire, April 27, 2023,

https://www.geekwire.com/2023/new-numbers-show-where-amazon-has-been-

adding-and-shedding-u-s-workers/

Frank Holmes, Top 10 Largest Fortune 500 Employers In The U.S., Forbes, October 26, 2022,

https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2022/10/26/top-10-largest-fortune-

500-employers-in-the-us/?sh=b3132397e36e;

Amazon.com, Inc. Consolidated EEO-

Report, 2021,

https://assets.aboutamazon.com/ff/dc/30bf8e3d41c7b250651f337a29c7/2021-

amazon-consolidated-eeo-1-report-2p.pdf;

Occupational Health and Safety

Administration, Establishment Specific Injury and Illness Data (NAICS 493110)

Amazon.com, Consolidated EEO-Report, 2021,

https://assets.aboutamazon.com/ff/dc/30bf8e3d41c7b250651f337a29c7/2021-

amazon-consolidated-eeo-1-report-2p.pdf;

Aboutamazon.com, Our workplace,

https://www.aboutamazon.com/workplace; Jason Del

Rey, “Jeff Bezos seems to be reckoning with his legacy in the wake of the Amazon union

drive,” Vox, April 15, 2021,

https://www.vox.com/recode/22385644/jeff-bezos-amazon-

warehouse-work-union-shareholder-letter-2021;

Katherine Long, “Leaked documents

show Amazon workers are up in arms over the company’s new raises,” Business Insider,

Oct 6, 2022

, https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-raises-workers-

leaked-documents-2022-10;

Luis Feliz Leon, “Michigan Amazon Workers Stage Largest

Delivery Station Strike Yet”, Labor Notes, July 17, 2023,

https://labornotes.org/2023/07/michigan-amazon-workers-stage-largest-delivery-

station-strike-yet;

Annika Merrilees, “St. Peters Amazon employees call for 10 dollar an

hour raise and better working conditions,” St. Louis Dispatch, September 15, 2022,

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/st-peters-amazon-employees-call-for-10-

an-hour-raises-better-working-conditions/article_664384f5-5bd2-59be-9e47-

74ca10e93d66.html;

Amanda Andrews, “'No justice, no work': Amazon workers demand

safety and fair pay,” Georgia Public Radio News, October 20, 2022

https://www.gpb.org/news/2022/10/20/no-justice-no-work-amazon-workers-

demand-safety-and-fair-pay

; Isobel Asher Hamilton, “Amazon workers in 3 US

warehouses staged walkouts as they seek $3 raises and 20-minute breaks, reports,”

Business Insider, March 17, 2022,

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-workers-

stage-walkouts-new-york-maryland-wage-increases-2022-3;

Brian Whitehead, “Amazon

employees strike in San Bernardino, demand $5 hourly pay raise,” San Bernadino Sun,

https://www.sbsun.com/2022/10/14/amazon-employees-strike-in-san-bernardino-

demand-5-hourly-pay-raise/;

Luis Feliz Leon, “Wage Gains at UPS Have Amazon Workers

Demanding More,” Labor Notes, August 3, 2023, https://labornotes.org/2023/08/wage-

gains-ups-have-amazon-workers-demanding-more.

Unless otherwise noted, all of the findings in this report are based on a NELP analysis of

earnings data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Quarterly Workforce Indicators for Q1 2022

and Q1 2005 and self-reporting by Amazon about its warehousing establishments to the

Occupational Health and Safety Administration.

See findings detailed below and in Section II of this report.

The concept of “middle-income” can be measured in a variety of ways, usually based on

median household income, household size and geography. See

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/a-dozen-ways-to-be-middle-class/. For U.S.

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

warehouse workers, median household income and size data are not publicly available

for counties or specific companies. In our analysis, we use average county earnings for all

workers in their county of employment as a proxy for middle-income.

See findings detailed below and in Section II of this report.

Amazon.com, Inc., Form-10K - for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2022,

https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001018724/d2fde7ee-05f7-419d-9ce8-

186de4c96e25.pdf

Amazon.com, Inc., Form-10K - for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2022,

https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001018724/d2fde7ee-05f7-419d-9ce8-

186de4c96e25.pdf

; Amazon.com, Inc. Consolidated EEO-Report, 2021,

https://assets.aboutamazon.com/ff/dc/30bf8e3d41c7b250651f337a29c7/2021-

amazon-consolidated-eeo-1-report-2p.pdf.

Amazon.com, Inc., Form-10K - for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2022,

https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001018724/d2fde7ee-05f7-419d-9ce8-

186de4c96e25.pdf

; Amazon.com, Inc. Consolidated EEO-Report, 2021,

https://assets.aboutamazon.com/ff/dc/30bf8e3d41c7b250651f337a29c7/2021-

amazon-consolidated-eeo-1-report-2p.pdf.

Amazon.com, Inc., Form-10K - for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2022,

https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001018724/d2fde7ee-05f7-419d-9ce8-

186de4c96e25.pdf

; Amazon.com, Inc. Consolidated EEO-Report, 2021,

https://assets.aboutamazon.com/ff/dc/30bf8e3d41c7b250651f337a29c7/2021-

amazon-consolidated-eeo-1-report-2p.pdf.

Aboutamazon.com, Our Workplace,

https://www.aboutamazon.com/workplace (accessed

September 20, 2023); Aboutamazon.com, “Why Amazon Supports a $15 Minimum Wage”,

https://www.aboutamazon.com/impact/economy/15-minimum-wage (accessed

September 20, 2023); Aboutamazon.com, ”Amazon is hiring 250,000 employees for the

holidays, and making its largest ever annual investment in U.S. hourly wages,” September

18, 2022,

https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/workplace/amazon-hiring-seasonal-

holiday-employees

Conversation and correspondence between Wendy Taylor and Missouri Worker Center

staff, August 2023

Aki Ito, “How the warehouse boom devoured America's workforce,” Business Insider,

October 19, 2022,

https://www.businessinsider.com/warehouse-jobs-economy-impact

blue-collar-pay-employment-hiring-boom-2022-10

Aki Ito, “How the warehouse boom devoured America's workforce,” Business Insider,

October 19, 2022,

https://www.businessinsider.com/warehouse-jobs-economy-impact-

blue-collar-pay-employment-hiring-boom-2022-10

Jeff Bezos, 2020 Letter to Shareholders, April 15, 2021,

https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/2020-letter-to-shareholders.

Stacey Mitchell and Ron Knox, How Amazon Exploits and Undermines Small Businesses, and

Why Breaking It Up Would Revive American Entrepreneurship, Institute for Local Self-

Reliance,

https://ilsr.org/fact-sheet-how-breaking-up-amazon-can-empower-small-

business/

; Ilkhan Ozsevim, “The Power of Amazon Business: Redefining global

procurement”, Procurement Magazine, July 6, 2023,

https://procurementmag.com/press-releases/the-power-of-amazon-business-

redefining-global-procurement

; Grace Browne, “Amazons Creep into Healthcare has

Some Experts Spooked,” Wired, December 1, 2022

https://www.wired.com/story/amazons-creep-into-health-care-has-some-experts-

spooked/

; Tamara Lee, Maite Tapia, Sanjay Pinto, Alí Bustamante, Carla Lima Aranzaes,

Spencer Shimek, “Amazon’s Policing Power: A Snapshot from Bessemer,”

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

https://smlr.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/Documents/News/Amazon_Policing_Power_

Report.pdf

; https://www.americanbanker.com/list/how-amazon-apple-facebook-google-

are-infiltrating-financial-services

https://www.fintechfutures.com/2019/07/the-

amazon-ification-of-banking/

; CB Insights, The 12 Industries Amazon Could Disrupt Next,

March 8, 2022, https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/amazon-disruption-

industries/; Cecilia Kang, “Here Comes the Full Amazonification of Whole Foods,” New

York Times, February 28, 2022;

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/28/technology/whole-foods-amazon-

automation.html

; Kaveh Waddell, “When Amazon Expands, These Communities Pay the

Price,” Consumer Reports, December 9, 2021.

https://www.wired.com/story/the-

amazonification-of-buying-a-new-car/

; Rachel DuRose, “Rise of the 'Jeff Bots': Former

Amazon leaders have infiltrated the tech industry and that's not always a good thing,

leadership coaches warn,“ Business Insider, October 8, 2022,

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-aws-amazonians-jeff-bezos-leadership-

management-business-2022-10

; Lauren Bridges, “Amazon’s Ring is the largest civilian

surveillance network the US has ever seen,” The Guardian, May 18, 2021.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/18/amazon-ring-largest-

civilian-surveillance-network-us

;

Frank Holmes, Top 10 Largest Fortune 500 Employers In The U.S., Forbes, October 26,

2022,

https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2022/10/26/top-10-largest-

fortune-500-employers-in-the-us/?sh=b3132397e36e;

Amazon.com, Inc. Consolidated

EEO-Report, 2021,

https://assets.aboutamazon.com/ff/dc/30bf8e3d41c7b250651f337a29c7/2021-

amazon-consolidated-eeo-1-report-2p.pdf;

Occupational Health and Safety

Administration, Establishment Specific Injury and Illness Data (NAICS 493110)

Todd Bishop, “Analysis: New jobs numbers show where Amazon has been adding and

shedding U.S. workers,” GeekWire, April 27, 2023,

https://www.geekwire.com/2023/new-numbers-show-where-amazon-has-been-

adding-and-shedding-u-s-workers/;

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/21/drivers-speak-

out-about-pressures-of-delivering-for-an-amazon-dsp.html

Amazon.com, Inc. Consolidated EEO-Report, 2021,

https://assets.aboutamazon.com/ff/dc/30bf8e3d41c7b250651f337a29c7/2021-

amazon-consolidated-eeo-1-report-2p.pdf.

Stacey Mitchell and Ron Knox, How Amazon Exploits and Undermines Small Businesses, and

Why Breaking It Up Would Revive American Entrepreneurship, Institute for Local Self-

Reliance,

https://ilsr.org/fact-sheet-how-breaking-up-amazon-can-empower-small-

business/

; Jennifer Berkshire, “For Amazon warehouse workers, a struggle to stay afloat,”

Economic Policy Institute, January 19, 2021,

https://www.epi.org/unequalpower/worker-stories/for-amazon-warehouse-workers-a-

struggle-to-stay-afloat/; Nicole Gracely, “'Being homeless is better than working for

Amazon,’” The Guardian, November 28, 2014,

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/nov/28/being-homeless-is-better-than-

working-for-amazon

Matthew Yglesias, “Watch America transform from making things to taking care of people”,

Vox, August 3, 2014,

https://www.vox.com/2014/8/3/5960619/largest-industry-by-

state-1990-2013;

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Largest industries by state, 1990–

2013,"

https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2014/ted_20140728.htm.

Claire Kirch, “Obama Talks Up Middle Class in Amazon Visit,” Publishers Weekly,

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-

news/bookselling/article/58492-obama-cozies-up-to-amazon-in-chattanooga.html

Matt Day and Spencer Soper, “Amazon Has Turned a Middle-Class Warehouse Career Into a

McJob,” Bloomberg, December 17, 2020,

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-12-17/amazon-amzn-job-pay-rate-

leaves-some-warehouse-employees-homeless

Jeff Beer, “Amazon’s smiling worker ad blitz is right out of Big Tech’s sly new playbook,”

Fast Company, December 9, 2020,

https://www.fastcompany.com/90583967/amazons-

smiling-worker-ad-blitz-is-right-out-of-big-techs-sly-new-playbook

Luis Feliz Leon, “Wage Gains at UPS Have Amazon Workers Demanding More,” Labor Notes,

August 3, 2023,

https://labornotes.org/2023/08/wage-gains-ups-have-amazon-

workers-demanding-more

; Annie Palmer, “Amazon is spending big to take on UPS and

FedEx,” CNBC,

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/30/amazon-is-spending-big-to-take-on-

ups-and-fedex.html

Matt Day and Spencer Soper, “Amazon Has Turned a Middle-Class Warehouse Career Into a

McJob,” Bloomberg, December 17, 2020,

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-12-17/amazon-amzn-job-pay-rate-

leaves-some-warehouse-employees-homeless

; Noam Scheiber, “Amazon Says It Pays

Alabama Workers Well; Other Local Employers Pay More,” , March 18, 2021,

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/business/economy/amazon-wages-alabama-

union.html.

The range in hourly pay is $17 to $28 per hour, according to media reports. See ”Amazon is

hiring 250,000 employees for the holidays, and making its largest ever annual investment

in U.S. hourly wages,” September 18, 2022,

https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/workplace/amazon-hiring-seasonal-holiday-

employees

National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Preface,” Out of Reach 2023. Available at

https://nlihc.org/oor.

Economic Policy Institute, Family Budget Map,

https://www.epi.org/resources/budget/budget-map/

NELP estimate based on Consumer Price Index figures from the Congressional Budget

Office’s July 2023 release of the

10-Year Economic Projections.

Jodi Kantor, Karen Weise and Grace Ashford, “The Amazon that Customers Don’t See,” New

York Times, June 15, 2021,

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/15/us/amazon-workers.html

Information on file with NELP. Among jurisdictions with wage floors of $19 or higher are

the California cities of

Berkeley ($18.07), Emeryville ($18,67), Mountain View ($18.15),

San Francisco ($18.07), and West Hollywood ($19.08); and the Washington cities of

SeaTac ($19.06), Seattle ($18.69), and Tukwila ($18.99).

J.J. McCorvey and Adiel Kaplan, “UPS workers approve new contract with hard-fought pay

and safety gains, ending strike threat,” NBC News, August 22, 2023,

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/ups-workers-approve-new-

contract-hard-fought-pay-safety-gains-rcna100466

Luis Feliz Leon, “Wage Gains at UPS Have Amazon Workers Demanding More,” Labor Notes,

August 3, 2023,

https://labornotes.org/2023/08/wage-gains-ups-have-amazon-

workers-demanding-more

Luis Feliz Leon, “Wage Gains at UPS Have Amazon Workers Demanding More,” Labor Notes,

August 3, 2023,

https://labornotes.org/2023/08/wage-gains-ups-have-amazon-

workers-demanding-more

Atlanta Civic Circle, May 18, 2023,

https://atlantaciviccircle.org/2023/05/18/east-point-

amazon-workers-demand-stable-schedules-guaranteed-hours-after-surprise-shift-cuts/ ;

“In Denial: Amazon’s Continuing Failure to Fix Its Injury Crisis,” April 2023,

https://thesoc.org/what-we-do/in-denial-amazons-continuing-failure-to-fix-its-injury-

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

crisis/; Amazon issued 13,000 disciplinary notices at a single U.S. warehouse, Reuters July

12, 2022;

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/12/amazon-issued-13000-disciplinary-

notices-at-a-single-us-warehouse.html

; Jodi Kantor, Karen Weise and Grace Ashford, “The

Amazon that Customers Don’t See,” New York Times, June 15, 2021,

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/15/us/amazon-workers.html

Annie Palmer, Amazon reports blowout profit, beats on sales and issues optimistic

guidance, CNBC, August 3, 2023,

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/03/amazon-amzn-q2-

earnings-report-2023.html

Amazon.com, Inc., Form-10K - for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2022,

https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001018724/d2fde7ee-05f7-419d-9ce8-

186de4c96e25.pdf

Diana Ionescu, “Amazon’s Growing Real Estate Empire,” Planetizen, June 11, 2022,

https://www.planetizen.com/news/2022/06/117483-amazons-growing-real-estate-

empire; Matt Day and Spencer Sope, “Amazon Closes, Abandons Plans for Dozens of US

Warehouses,” Bloomberg, September 2, 2022,

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-02/amazon-closes-abandons-

plans-for-dozens-of-us-warehouses#xj4y7vzkg

Molly Kinder and Laura Stateler, “Amazon and Walmart have raked in billions in additional

profits during the pandemic, and shared almost none of it with their workers,” Brookings,

December 22, 2020,

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/amazon-and-walmart-have-

raked-in-billions-in-additional-profits-during-the-pandemic-and-shared-almost-none-of-

it-with-their-workers/

Occupational Safety and Health Administration, “US Department of Labor finds Amazon

exposed workers to unsafe conditions, ergonomic hazards at three more warehouses in

Colorado, Idaho, New York,” February 1, 2023,

https://www.osha.gov/news/newsreleases/national/02012023; Strategic Organizing

Center, “In Denial: Amazon’s Continuing Failure to Fix Its Injury Crisis,” April 2023,

https://thesoc.org/what-we-do/in-denial-amazons-continuing-failure-to-fix-its-injury-

crisis/

; Strategic Organizing Center, “The Injury Machine: How’s Amazon’s Production

System Hurts Workers,” April 2022, https://thesoc.org/what-we-do/the-injury-machine-

how-amazons-production-system-hurts-workers/; Ariel Zilber, “Amazon employees rage

over being forced to work after colleague died from heart attack,” New York Post, January

10, 2023,

https://nypost.com/2023/01/10/amazon-employees-rage-over-treatment-of-

coworker-who-died-in-warehouse/

Jules Roscoe, “‘Grueling’: Amazon Workers Describe What It's Like Working Peak Season,”

Vice, December 15, 2022,

https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxna3q/grueling-amazon-

workers-describe-what-its-like-working-peak-season

Jodi Kantor, Karen Weise and Grace Ashford, “The Amazon that Customers Don’t See,” New

York Times, June 15, 2021,

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/15/us/amazon-workers.html; Irene

Tung and Debbie Berkowitz, “Amazon’s Disposable Workers: High Injury Rates and

Turnover at Fulfillment Centers in California,” March 2020,

https://s27147.pcdn.co/wp-

content/uploads/Data-Brief-Amazon-Disposable-Workers-Injury-Turnover-Rates-

California-Fulfillment-Centers3-20.pdf

Note these monthly earnings data are measured by industry, not occupation, and include all

occupations within an establishment designated in that industry. Occupational earnings

breakdowns at the county-level are not available. We use the term “warehouse worker”

to refer to workers employed at a warehouse establishment regardless of occupation.

Recent OEWS data show that the largest occupations in the warehousing and storage

industry are as follows, “Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand” (22.5

percent), “Stockers and Order Fillers” (22.1 percent), Industrial Truck and Tractor

Operators (16.5 percent).

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

The Economist, “What Amazon Does to Wages,” January 20, 2018,

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/01/20/what-amazon-does-to-wages;

Matt Day and Spencer Soper, “Amazon Has Turned a Middle-Class Warehouse Career

Into a McJob,” Bloomberg, December 17, 2020,

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-12-17/amazon-amzn-job-pay-rate-

leaves-some-warehouse-employees-homeless

; Jodi Kantor, Karen Weise and Grace

Ashford, “The Amazon that Customers Don’t See,” New York Times, June 15, 2021,

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/15/us/amazon-workers.html; Irene

Tung and Debbie Berkowitz, “Amazon’s Disposable Workers: High Injury Rates and

Turnover at Fulfillment Centers in California,” March 2020,

https://s27147.pcdn.co/wp-

content/uploads/Data-Brief-Amazon-Disposable-Workers-Injury-Turnover-Rates-

California-Fulfillment-Centers3-20.pdf

Our findings in this section reflect earnings from quarter 1 of 2022, which we believe to

be the most appropriate for assessing warehouse worker earnings outside of seasonal

fluctuations in hours and employment. However, even in quarter 4 of 2022, which

captures earnings during the holiday shopping spike (when many employers including

Amazon require mandatory overtime) and also after Amazon’s October 2022 raise,

warehouse worker earnings in Amazon counties were still substantially lower than

average earnings for all workers in those counties.

Matt Day and Spencer Soper, “Amazon Has Turned a Middle-Class Warehouse Career Into a

McJob,” Bloomberg, December 17, 2020,

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-12-17/amazon-amzn-job-pay-rate-

leaves-some-warehouse-employees-homeless

Note that these are averages among counties, not weighted averages. Neither the Census

Bureau nor Amazon has disclosed microdata on workers earnings. These monthly

earnings data do not account for difference in the number of hours worked.

Prior studies have suggested that that Amazon may site facilities in the poorer parts of

higher-earnings counties, in proximity to the consumer markets in which Amazon wants

to operate. See Good Jobs First, “Mapping Amazon 2.0: Where the Online Giant Locates Its

Warehouses and Why,” December 23, 2021,

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/adc5ff253a3643f88d39e7f3ef1a09ee; and Kaveh

Woodall, “When Amazon Expands, These Communities Pay the Price”, Consumer Reports,

December 9, 2021,

https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/corporate-

accountability/when-amazonexpands-these-communities-pay-the-price-a2554249208/

Note the Consumer Reports study doesn’t distinguish between fulfillment centers and

other Amazon facilities. Taking these two studies together suggests that Amazon sites its’

facilities in the low-income areas of high-income counties. Many Amazon workers have

also reported difficulties with meeting housing costs and need to commute far distances

to their jobs at Amazon warehouses because they may be unable to afford to live in

higher-earnings areas nearby. See Jennifer Berkshire, “For Amazon workers, a struggle to

staty afloat,” Economic Policy Institute, January 19,

2021,

https://www.epi.org/unequalpower/worker-stories/foramazon-warehouse-

workers-a-struggle-to-stay-afloat/.

These differences were statistically significant at a p<0.001.

Note these monthly earnings data are measured by industry, not occupation, and include all

occupations within an establishment designated in that industry. Occupational earnings

breakdowns at the county-level are not available. We use the term “warehouse worker”

to refer to workers employed at a warehouse establishment regardless of occupation.

Recent OEWS data show that the largest occupations in the warehousing and storage

industry are “Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand” (22.5 percent),

“Stockers and Order Fillers” (22.1 percent), Industrial Truck and Tractor Operators (16.5

percent). Note also that our earnings variable measures earnings for workers who

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

worked on the first day of the quarter. This may mean that earnings in Amazon counties

are lower because of atypically high attrition rates and higher worker churn at Amazon

facilities. Additionally, it is possible that earnings in Amazon counties are lower because

of higher-than-average rates of lost work time resulting from worker injuries.

This measures the difference between the average among each group of counties. The

difference between Amazon and non-Amazon counties is statistically significant at

p<0.005. We compared 123 Amazon counties and 518 other counties in the U.S. that also

have warehouses that are in the 20

percentile for average earnings for all works. See

appendix for a table comparing the two groups. Our findings in this section reflect

earnings from quarter 1 of 2022, which we believe to be the most appropriate for

assessing warehouse worker earnings outside of seasonal fluctuations in hours and

employment. However, we had similar findings when conducting the analysis using data

from quarter 4 of 2022, which captures earnings during the holiday shopping spike

(when many employers including Amazon require mandatory overtime) and also after

Amazon’s October 2022 raise.

Note that these monthly earnings data from the Census do not contain information about

the number of hours worked by each employee and therefore cannot provide detail on

hourly wages for workers, only total earnings for the month. Lower earnings may reflect

fewer hours worked and vice versa. This is important to take into consideration when

interpreting our results given that uneven and unpredictable scheduling of hours has

been an ongoing concern for many Amazon workers. See Kendall Glynn, East Point

Amazon workers demand stable schedules, guaranteed hours after surprise shift cuts,

Atlanta Civic Circle, May 18, 2023,

https://atlantaciviccircle.org/2023/05/18/east-point-

amazon-workers-demand-stable-schedules-guaranteed-hours-after-surprise-shift-cuts/

Also, note that the Census data we use measures earnings for workers that were working

on the first day of the quarter. Many of those workers may not stay for the entire quarter,

and the average monthly earnings will be lower as a result. This may be particularly true

for Amazon workers given the high rates of turnover. See Jodi Kantor, Karen Weise and

Grace Ashford, “The Amazon that Customers Don’t See,” New York Times, June 15, 2021,

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/15/us/amazon-workers.html; Irene

Tung and Debbie Berkowitz, “Amazon’s Disposable Workers: High Injury Rates and

Turnover at Fulfillment Centers in California,”

Difference is statistically significant at p<0.05.

Note these monthly earnings data are measured by industry, not occupation, and include all

occupations within an establishment designated in that industry. Occupational earnings

breakdowns at the county-level are not available. We use the term “warehouse worker”

to refer to workers employed at a warehouse establishment regardless of occupation.

Ellora Derenoncourt, Clemens Noelke, David Weil & Bledi Taska, Spillover Effects from

Voluntary Employer Minimum Wages, NBER Working Papers, October 2021,

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29425/w29425.pdf (under

revision); David Card, “Who Sets Your Wage?” American Economic Review, vol. 112, no. 4,

April 2022,

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.112.4.1075.

Previous analyses have shown that warehouse wages tend to fall when Amazon sets up

shop. For example, a Bloomberg analysis showed that in the counties where Amazon has

opened its largest facilities, average industry compensation slips by more than 6% during

the facility’s first two years, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. See

Matt Day and Spencer Soper, “Amazon Has Turned a Middle-Class Warehouse Career Into

a McJob,” Bloomberg, December 17, 2020,

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-12-17/amazon-amzn-job-pay-rate-

leaves-some-warehouse-employees-homeless.

Likewise, a 2018 study from The

Economist also found that in the two and a half years before the opening of a new Amazon

warehouse facility, local warehouse wages increased by an average of 8 percent. In the

two and half years after Amazon’s arrival, those wages fall by 3 percent. See The

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

Economist, “What Amazon Does to Wages,” January 20, 2018,

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/01/20/what-amazon-does-to-wages;

An Economic Policy Institute study from 2018 did not find that Amazon presence has

significant effects on earnings, See Janelle Jones and Ben Zipperer, “Unfulfilled promises:

Amazon warehouse do not generate broad based employment, February 1, 2018

https://www.epi.org/publication/unfulfilled-promises-amazon-warehouses-do-not-

generate-broad-based-employment-growth/

Atlanta Civic Circle, May 18, 2023,

https://atlantaciviccircle.org/2023/05/18/east-point-

amazon-workers-demand-stable-schedules-guaranteed-hours-after-surprise-shift-cuts/

;

“In Denial: Amazon’s Continuing Failure to Fix Its Injury Crisis,” April 2023,

https://thesoc.org/what-we-do/in-denial-amazons-continuing-failure-to-fix-its-injury-

crisis/

; Amazon issued 13,000 disciplinary notices at a single U.S. warehouse, Reuters July

12, 2022;

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/12/amazon-issued-13000-disciplinary-

notices-at-a-single-us-warehouse.html

; Jodi Kantor, Karen Weise and Grace Ashford, “The

Amazon that Customers Don’t See,” New York Times, June 15, 2021,

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/15/us/amazon-workers.html

Matt Day and Spencer Soper, “Amazon Has Turned a Middle-Class Warehouse Career Into a

McJob,” Bloomberg, December 17, 2020,

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-12-17/amazon-amzn-job-pay-rate-

leaves-some-warehouse-employees-homeless

Conversations and correspondence between Karen Crawford and United for Respect staff,

August 2023

U.S. Census Bureau, QWI Q1 2022

Conversations and correspondence between Wendy Taylor and Missouri Worker Center

staff, August 2023

Note that these are averages among counties, not weighted averages. Neither the Census

Bureau nor Amazon has disclosed microdata on workers earnings. These monthly

earnings data do not account for difference in the number of hours worked.

Note that these are averages among counties, not weighted averages. Neither the Census

Bureau nor Amazon has disclosed microdata on workers earnings. These monthly

earnings data do not account for difference in the number of hours worked.

Matt Day and Spencer Soper, “Amazon Has Turned a Middle-Class Warehouse Career Into a

McJob,” Bloomberg, December 17, 2020,

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-12-17/amazon-amzn-job-pay-rate-

leaves-some-warehouse-employees-homeless

MWPVL, Amazon Global Supply Chain and Fulfillment Center Network,

https://www.mwpvl.com/html/amazon_com.html. Accessed August 15, 2023.

In the counties in which Amazon would eventually build fulfillment centers by the year

2022, average earnings for all workers were 28 percent higher than in the counties in

which Amazon would not eventually build fulfillment centers.

Average earnings for all workers predicted warehouse worker earnings (p<0.001), but

future Amazon presence did not This is also the case when comparing future Amazon

counties to all U.S. counties with warehouses.

Differences between categories in Q1 2005 are statistically significant at p<0.005.

Amazon.com, Inc. – Consolidated EE0-1 Report, 2021,

https://assets.aboutamazon.com/ff/dc/30bf8e3d41c7b250651f337a29c7/2021-

amazon-consolidated-eeo-1-report-2p.pdf. It is important to note that Amazon does not

include delivery drivers in this “laborers and helpers” category, which Amazon doesn’t

consider as employees and employs via intermediaries called Delivery Service Providers

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

(DSPS), or as independent contractors.

Gibbs Law Group, Amazon Flex Driver Lawsuits (2023),

https://www.classlawgroup.com/amazon-flex-lawsuit

Compare these figures to national data of the racial and ethnic composition of the

warehouse industry workforce: Labor force statistics from the Current Population Survey

(CPS) show that a majority of workers employed in warehousing and storage are white

(65 percent), followed by “Hispanic” (35 percent) and Black (25 percent). (Note that the

CPS demographic estimates do not exclude Latinx workers from racial categories; thus,

totals do not add up). See Current Population Survey, 2022,

https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat18.htm. Accessed September 13, 2023.

For the purposes of this analysis, we grouped earnings data for Latinx workers of all races,

and did not include earnings data for Latinx workers with earnings data for Black

workers or white workers.

Diana Ionescu, “Amazon’s Growing Real Estate Empire,” Planetizen, June 11, 2022,

https://www.planetizen.com/news/2022/06/117483-amazons-growing-real-estate-

empire

Mariella Moon, “Amazon's iRobot purchase is under investigation by European authorities,”

Endgadget, July 7, 2023,

https://www.engadget.com/amazons-irobot-purchase-is-under-

investigation-by-european-authorities-054857108.html

As noted above, these workers do not include delivery drivers whom Amazon employers

through intermediaries or as independent contractors.

Note we use the term “front-line worker” interchangeably with the EEO-1 term “laborers

and helpers.”

Form 10-K -

https://ir.aboutamazon.com/sec-filings/sec-filings-

details/default.aspx?FilingId=16361618

; This is a conservative estimate, based on three-

year average of Amazon’s reported profits from 2020 to 2022, including a net loss in

2022.

So far in 2023, Amazon has reported higher profits than in 2022, including record-breaking

sales on Prime Day in July. See Annie Palmer, Amazon reports blowout profit, beats on

sales and issues optimistic guidance, CNBC, August 3, 2023,

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/03/amazon-amzn-q2-earnings-report-2023.html.

Molly Kinder and Laura Stateler, “Amazon and Walmart have raked in billions in additional

profits during the pandemic, and shared almost none of it with their workers,” Brookings

Institute, December 22, 2020,

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/amazon-and-

walmart-have-raked-in-billions-in-additional-profits-during-the-pandemic-and-shared-

almost-none-of-it-with-their-workers/

; Molly Kinder, Katie Bach, and Laura Stateler,

“Profits and the pandemic: As shareholder wealth soared, workers were left behind,”

Brookings Institute, April 21, 2022,

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/profits-and-the-

pandemic-as-shareholder-wealth-soared-workers-were-left-behind/

Ariel Zilber, “Jeff Bezos’ wealth balloons by $12 billion as Amazon stock soars 11 percent,”

New York Post, August 4, 2023,

https://nypost.com/2023/08/04/jeff-bezos-wealth-

balloons-by-12b-as-amazon-stock-soars-11/

Amazon.com, Inc., Form-10K - for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2022,

https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001018724/d2fde7ee-05f7-419d-9ce8-

186de4c96e25.pdf

Amazon.com, Inc., Form-10K - for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2022,

https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001018724/d2fde7ee-05f7-419d-9ce8-

186de4c96e25.pdf

According to Amazon’s 2022 Form 10-K, assets grew from $54,912,000,000 to $

A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

90,076,000,000 from 2020 to 2022. Also, see

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-

warehouse-expansion-slowed-still-towers-over-competitors-2022-12

Amazon.com, Inc., Form-10K - for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2022,

https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001018724/d2fde7ee-05f7-419d-9ce8-

186de4c96e25.pdf

Amazon.com, Inc., Form-10K - for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2022,

https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001018724/d2fde7ee-05f7-419d-9ce8-

186de4c96e25.pdf

Aboutamazon.com, “Amazon pays millions of euros in corporate tax across Europe,” March

7, 2023,

https://www.aboutamazon.eu/news/policy/amazon-pays-millions-of-euros-in-

corporate-tax-across-europe

Helen Reid, “Amazon plans more warehouses and higher headcount in Europe,” Reuters,

May 9, 2023,

https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/amazon-plans-more-

warehouses-higher-headcount-europe-2023-05-09/

Correspondence between Aldo Navarette and International Brotherhood of Teamsters staff,

August 2023.

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attorney general,”

https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/19/tech/amazon-racial-equity-

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A Better Balance, Fact Sheet: The Need for Fair Schedules, updated September 1, 2014,

https://www.abetterbalance.org/resources/fair-schedules-factsheet/

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https://hbr.org/2022/03/give-service-workers-stable-schedules.

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Michael Sainato, “‘I’m still in pain’: Amazon employees say climate of fear has led to high

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100

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https://newrepublic.com/article/175533/right-to-work-

laws-screw-working-class

; Celine McNicholas, Margaret Poydock, and Lynn Rhinehart,

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A GOOD LIVING: AMAZON CAN AND MUST MAKE A MIDDLE-INCOME LIVELIHOOD POSSIBLE| SEPTEMBER 2023

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103

Elizabeth Rice, “Watch out, it’s coming:’ EEOC Announces Planned Reinstatement of Pay

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crisis/

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