Median is the appropriate measure to use if you're looking at the overall pay of a company's workforce.
Average/mean is disproportionately influenced by a small number of highly paid employees.
In this case, the article is clearly demonstrating that despite Amazon's commanding market share, incredible wealth, and the largess bestowed upon their executives, some of their workforce is so poorly paid that they may not even make a living wage.
Yes, I agree. Mean is obviously going to be to the right of median in this income distribution, since there will be many employees making 200k+.
>In Seattle, Amazon’s more than 45,000 employees are paid an average of more than $110,000, according to an analysis of individual worker data posted to job review site Glassdoor. The median, or midpoint, of Amazon’s 566,000 individual employee salaries worldwide stood far lower.
Granted, we are using average data from Glassdoor, whereas Amazon is self-reporting the median salary information. Plus, Amazon has part-time workers whose wages it annualizes to include the dataset. This makes me wonder though, are they counting the benefits that those workers are not receiving due to their lower number of hours?
Not to mention that this means the lower half of wage earners at Amazon make an average of $14 an hour, which isn't terrible for, what we can assume is, mostly unskilled labor.
Replying to myself: I didn't mean to imply that the article or its contents are manipulative; I merely meant that it's a good example of how different numbers can be, and how that is often used to manipulate perception.
Thinks what's normal exactly? That not all of his employees get paid an equal amount? I'm inclined to agree that he thinks that's normal, yes. Given that it's true at almost every company in the world, that seems like a reasonable position.
It's driven by Amazon's low prices just as much as it is driven by Bezos' wealth. Customers get the benefit of the low prices.
I'm not saying that to congratulate Amazon, I'm pointing out that there are more people involved than Amazon shareholders and employees, people who apparently put low prices ahead of any concerns they have over compensation at Amazon.
Equality of what? Should one of the people who works in their warehouse in North Carolina make equal pay with a software engineer who lives in Seattle?
I consider myself to be a "bleeding heart capitalist". I don't believe that we should be increasing the minimum wage because history shows anytime you interfere with the free market, there are unintended consequences. It's also not the role of private businesses to manage social policy.
On the other hand, I think the richest country in the world shouldn't have people starving on the street and without basic healthcare. We already know how to square that circle.
1. Universal Healthcare that's not tied to the employer.
2. Increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit, make more people eligible, and make it easier for people to get it during the year to supplement their wages instead of at tax refund time. why go through the circuitous route of forcing companies to pay above market rates and raising prices on everyone? Just give working people money.
3. Better mass transportation to make getting to a job easier without having to have a car.
4. Subsidize child care. If conservatives truly believe in protecting life, caring about children means caring about the born - not just the unborn.
Great points, except child care. With subsidized childcare, I’m afraid, you will def be promoting all the wrong (and quite selfish, to be honest) goals and values.
Richest country in the world? That’s quite arguable and very common mistake. It’s not fair to compare US to countries with negative GPD (this sentence is sarcastic, not literal).
I have been unfortunate enough to to leave in a state built on top of socialist agenda. Where the concept is extremely fragile. Once you increase the government’s role in lives of ordinary people (which sounds great in theory! As per Marx’s and Lenin’s paperwork) you are risking of turning the whole country into the ordinary DMV Office (one we all hate an avoid) wherever you go. That’s a nightmare that’s not that far from reality if we jump collectively on this socialist bandwagon.
People are going to have children. By "subsidize childcare" I mean childcare during the day so people can work.
As far as the DMV office that seems like one of the better run places. You go in, fill out paperwork, they give you a ticket, and you sit in the waiting room and when your number is called, you do an eye test, take a picture, swipe your card and you are in an out.
You're assuming 2 kids and 1 income earner, though.
It's above minimum wage. If we say that's not enough, we should raise minimum wage. Or we should create a society where it's possible for the people currently working for $26k/yr to have a stable roadmap to much higher earnings. But I don't think Amazon alone is to blame for the problem.
I'm not assuming everyone with that salary qualifies. I think we just have different definitions of "sizable." I think given these numbers it's highly likely to be sizable percentage of salaries, essentially, that we're subsidizing for Amazon because of their refusal to pay living wages. What's sizable? 5%? 10%? 30%? Hard to say, and I don't exactly expect Amazon to come forward with these numbers.
Except raising the minimum wage is often met with cries that it will stifle business and prevent competition. The problem is fundamentally that labor markets can't be free markets, and the minimum wage is not a viable way to control the market distortions. The better solution is to use a basic income which allows people to not work for companies like Amazon until they can pay a better wage.
A minimum wage of $7/hr in the Bay Area or NYC is useless. That won't cover transportation. $14/hr is still, basically, the same amount of more or less useless.
In, to quote Ken White, "pluck-my-banjo" Texas, that's a perfectly fine and livable sum. A dollar or two raise and you can probably start saving up for a house realistically. $14/hr is kingly.
Amazon warehouses are usually not in banjo-playing rural areas, but rather as close to major towns as is economically feasible for Amazon's rent bill.
This is neither a basic income nor a federal minimum wage problem. This is a lack of competing opportunities for minimally skilled workers problem. If these same workers had realistic job opportunities that paid well, then Amazon would have to raise wages (and pass some of that onto the consumers, but, that's relatively nothing).
Can we please end this charade of pretending a $14 wage is kingly anywhere? I mean even the whole idea of 'banjo-playing areas'? Come on. I find it really gross the way people that have good jobs and have never left urban/suburban environments typecast the rest of the country.
Can you leave the mock disgust behind? You probably live in an urban/suburban area just like the rest of us, yet your lecturing us.
$14 an hour is not as bad as you think. Median nursing salary in England = 23000 pounds = 32300 usd. So the median amazon warehouse worker makes 82.5% of what the median nurse makes in the U.K. Is that really so bad?
I do live in a rural area of the USA, and I can verify that making $14/hr is enough to live a modest lower middle class lifestyle around here. Is that good enough for you?
A lot of people here have preconceived notions about the living conditions of non-coastal areas and, to be frank, it gets old. OP is correct to lecture people because they are completely fucking correct in most cases.
You can't compare absolute wages between the US and europe. This kind of money will buy you a way better life in europe if you consider health care, social security and overall working conditions.
Yeah, even in the cheapest parts of the US, $14/hr at best would make you "upper lower class" or "lower middle class", meaning consistently able to pay your rent for an apartment. Or possibly, if you're really really good with your money otherwise and also manage to save for years without any medical expenses, start buying a small condo or half of a duplex. But that's not kingly for sure.
That's about $30k a year. That's comfortable in areas within an hour or two of my town.
I made that amount when I was in college, in the DC area, and most certainly survived just fine. Had I lived more rural in an area where entry level homes are <200k and not 600k+, that would of gone much farther.
And the banjo-playing is mostly a joke, especially in Texas. That being said, as an avid hiker, I spend a significant chunk of my time in places best labeled as "Nowhere, really".
Show me one person in this country with two kids who makes $14/hr and doesn't feel like they're struggling. College is easy, I survived on <$9/hr in college but you don't see me pretending that what is supportive of a college lifestyle and what is supportive of normal people with normal lives are the same thing.
>Had I lived more rural in an area where entry level homes are <200k and not 600k+, that would of gone much farther.
It would've gone a bit further but certainly not 'much.'
>That being said, as an avid hiker, I spend a significant chunk of my time in places best labeled as "Nowhere, really".
Somehow I think even you realize that using 'I hike' as a proxy for 'I have familiarity with rural areas' is pretty lame.
I know a lot of people back home, in rural Maine, who have a two-income household where each makes $15/hour, and they get by alright with a house and a couple of kids.
Of course, a decent house in that area runs $80-100k, whereas the same house in the area I live outside of Boston would cost $400k, and you couldn't buy a property with an equivalent amount of land attached at any price in the Bay area.
Yeah but that's my point. They each make $15/hr and they're 'alright.' A few of the other commenters who have chimed in here also match what my experience has been, mainly that $15/hr in rural areas isn't bad but it's not really good either. It allows you to get into the bottom end of the middle class but that's about it. It's certainly not 'kingly' and usually doesn't provide the sort of safety net people need to really feel comfortable either.
So should we be subsidizing everyone so they "live like kings"?
My son is making about $30K a year ($2000 a month) and I helped him do his budget so I know what his expenses are:
Rent - $600
Car note - $300
Car Insurance - $250
Utilities - $350
That leaves him about $500 a month for "everything else".
Yes that puts him on the edge and thanks to the ACA he's still covered under our insurance until he turns 26 and if he needs a car repair we help him.
Two conclusions:
I think we should have universal health care as a nation.
If we had better mass transit, people wouldn't need cars and it would make finding a job easier.
According to the gross up calculator at psycheckcity.com he would need to make around $16.50/hour or $34000 a year to have enough cushion for things that happen. Strangely enough, that was also the salary I needed 20 years ago before I could make it on my own without asking my parents for help. I made that my first year out of college as a computer operator.
People who make 100k per year feel like they are struggling. Their feelings about their finances place the company under no obligation to pay them more.
The expenses that truly impact economic mobility: education, healthcare, childcare are in fact getting more expensive, everywhere.[1]
And if you want good versions of these things, you're more likely to find them in coastal urban cities, where basic cost of living (food and housing) is extremely high.
Remarking that "oh they'll be fine over there" when people are fleeing there for better resources is consigning a segment of our population to a permanent underclass status.
As someone currently living in a "banjo playing area" (Bozeman, Montana), yeah, $14 will barely cover a studio apartment in town. You could afford an apartment in the next town over, but it would be a good 40% of your income, and now you either own a winter-capable car or walk 5-6 miles for the bus. The next city out to the west, well, you can't get a house for less than $400,000 (basically a retirement settlement). Go east you're going to be stuck on the wrong side of the pass about 1/4 of the winter.
You've got to get somewhere around 30-40 miles out of the city to buy a house on $14 an hour (assuming the 20% of income rule of thumb).
According to paycheckcity.com - assuming you get paid holidays - that's about $2000 a month in GA after taxes. There are plenty of places in GA and even metro Atlanta where you could live off of that.
It's impossible to give Amazon more incentive to automate, since they already intend to automate everything as soon as it's feasible. Raising minimum wage or even wages in general for warehouse workers wouldn't accelerate that schedule, since the obstacles to automation are primarily technical.
Kivas are nice and all, but they can't pick and they definitely can't stow. They could probably move pallets, but couldn't palletize, and having them run around the facilities at the necessary speed dragging a train of pallets would be a safety hazard.
They are really good at reading QR codes and turning at 90 degree angles, though.
But it's a business decision to pay expensive engineering time to automate what can be done by people for much cheaper. If the people become too expensive, the business decision becomes easier.
There are places in India where they pay 100 men pennies to dig a trench. Sure, they could buy a machine so 1 person could do the work of 100, but if the machine costs 100k and the guy who is trained to operate it makes 10 an hour, the payoff time is too long to justify. If the guys digging the trench demand 5 an hour, the barrier to the investment goes down significantly.
This is why, if a 15 dollar minimum wage is passed nation wide, you will never order from a person at McDonald's again... and any niche restaurant that does use people will cost significantly more. A large business like McDonalds benefits from this because they can absorb the cost. A small business can't, so big corporation's have less competition and can make even larger profits because they have less downward pressure on their prices.
I can't back it up with data, but I'm not certain that $15/hr would be too expensive for Amazon warehouse labor. Automating those warehouses entirely would either require very expensive, as yet technically infeasible, robots (and the engineering infrastructure to maintain them) capable of adapting to the existing human-centric ergonomics, and/or committing to redesigning all of the facilities around a new automation paradigm. Paying humans more still seems like a better deal for the forseeable future.
I work in a warehouse full of them, I see them more often than I see my own family. They do one thing well, but still require human intervention at times and still run into each other now and again.
Other facility jobs, like picking and stowing, run up against vision and fine motor skill problems that turn out to be really difficult for AI and robotics to solve. They'll be automated eventually, but I don't think it will be soon. I might be wrong, though.
They've already automated the easy parts in a lot of their warehouses. They've gone from runners to using the Kiva bots to bring the items to the packagers. Automating picking and boxing from there will be really hard.
Wouldn't jump to that conclusion, given that this number is a median, not a mean. The minimum full-time salary could also be $28,446 and yield the same median number, depending on how Amazon pays their bottom rung.
>> Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos received $1,681,840 in compensation in 2017, the proxy statement said, $1.6 million of which represents the cost of providing his security.
Is that pretty typical for a person who is say, in the richest 5-100 people in the world to spend on security? What kind of protection does that buy?
More to the point, the $1.6M number is wholly irrelevant, an accounting detail due to the "security" issue. Bezos makes $1B-$10B/yr because he is a major shareholder in Amazon.
Probably includes private air travel and some bodyguards.
Not irrelevant because the news story is about direct compensation by the company to 2 different classes of employees. Factoring in stock ownership by Bezos is what's irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
I mean, I heard that Steve Job's salary was $1 as CEO before. Is it possible that by carefully following someone else's framing, you can nevertheless walk straight into irrelevance?
That's more than a junior yearly salary for a software engineer with a degree where I'm from though. With higher taxes, higher prices for consumer electronics and much more expensive gasoline.
Amazon employs significantly more workers that are stocking warehouses and filling boxes than are writing code. So the median Amazon worker by pay is working in a warehouse, probably entry-level or thereabouts, and is making about $14 an hour.
The thing is, direct conversions do not really work. I don't think they operate much in Brazil, but if they did, the salaries would be adjusted to the Brazillian reality (minimum wage, average person income, purchasing power, etc), so in reality, it would be much less than 28 grand USD.
The more real conversion is to use a purchasing power index, such as the big-mac index. Using the 2018 data for the big-mac index, that would probably equate to mostly 30.000,00 BRL, which is 2500 BRL/month, which is above Brazil's minimum wage, but it's still a very basic salary, probably comparable to earning 2200,00 USD in the US.
The point is, we don't know how the data was presented by Amazon. I'd expect that the wages reported would be in USD to show how much it actually costs to the company in the United States, and not some weird index.
If they pay, say, R$ 30,000.00/year, I doubt they'd report anything other than the direct conversion to USD.
Before people comment too much about wage inequality consider for a moment that this ins't a feudal state where people are locked into role and wage limits outside their control.
I am a software developer for one of the larger companies and also an Army Reservist. When I go away to do Army stuff I frequently encounter people who work much harder and earn much less than I do in their civilian jobs. Is that fair? I would say, it doesn't matter.
I tell those people how being a software developer generally isn't super intense or stressful and you make all this money, but yet the people I tell this to generally don't want to write software. The disparity is that a senior software development position isn't immediately free like a dinner mint at the end of dinner. You have to practice writing software really hard and really invest your time into solving hard problems. In all my experience talking about wage inequality the ultimate disparity that always arises is time spent investing in yourself without any reasonable compensation.
EDIT: I did not start programming until age 28. I was already married and had two children.
Sure, but you're omitting a crucial step - a relative minority of the population were actively enabled and were able to pursue their interests/self-invest/etc. when they were much younger (read: teenaged), which gave them a snowballing competitive advantage as they got older.
I didn't pursue programming as a hobby- and then a career- until later in life than what you are assuming here. In fact, I have worked with a number of people at multiple companies- their first programming jobs- who are older than me. They have all come from lower paying jobs. The key is that they put in effort to change.
One was raising two children- an infant and a toddler- and if he wasn't actively coding, he was reading or listening to something programming related.
For now, at least, programming is a highly sought-after skill, and with determination and effort, you can get into it. There really aren't any other barriers than (1) saving up for a cheap computer, and (2) having reliable internet access.
The lie in America is that everyone is good at everything and those who don't succeed aren't trying hard enough. This lie is used to make people who aren't talented believe it's due to a moral failing or character flaw and thus talented people are morally superior.
I'm a high paid software engineer. I also had amazing computer teachers and remember writing BASIC programs to play MIDI in elementary. I also have the advantage of living in the city, being a white male, and being young and social.
Being a software engineer requires a particular mindset, a lot of time and exposure, and people willing to support that. I was lucky enough to have all of the above, but most folks do not.
I'm in the midst of helping a friend who is currently a welder move into software engineering. He's extremely intelligent and has the brain for it, but it's also taken literal years, finding him a capable dev machine (a used macbook air, donated from another engineer), tutoring him (me and another engineer, going on for two years now), and now he's going to a bootcamp (which cost thousands of dollars he didn't have in his pocket).
He is still going to have to find an actual job and make the move from bootcamp to real life. That's another involved process that will require multiple people helping him.
And again, this is a young white male who has a very high aptitude for this.
It's a bit more work than "just invest in yourself!". The average computer user has difficulty searching their own email or resetting a password. Even those with natural aptitude require help - and not a trivial amount either.
And what you are proposing for your friend, after all these years of struggle for a better tomorrow - is to make the same amount of money as he did as a welder?
There are 2 sides to this. And the positive side of having something to work towards is usually not mentioned.
I can give you an example from Europe, in a country which is homogeneous ethnically. We all went to the same public schools and we had the same opportunities. At 30 - some of us make more than 10 times than others. There is no system of oppression which caused this. It was simply the market which has imposed this difference. And the market is at an equilibrium - because the people who earn higher wages, pay a LOT of money for healthcare, the social pension system and other social security things. If the gov would increase this further in order to close the "gap" between high earners and the have-nots/less, the high earners would just leave the country (they already do this to a degree).
Why not let the market decide? This is not about privilege and oppression and I am surprised that over the pond people have not learned from Europe's history.
There is also the side that by having a system in place that rewards effort - people strive for more everyday and this leads to prosperity. This country has been under communism and during those times no one was struggling for anything, because they were paid just the same.
> And what you are proposing for your friend, after all these years of struggle for a better tomorrow - is to make the same amount of money as he did as a welder?
He doesn't have to breathe toxic fumes that screw up his health. That's kind of a big plus.
He can likely continue programming to a far older age. That might be a big plus.
I'm going to guess that the majority of people working in Amazon warehouses are well into adulthood, probably have kids, don't have above a high school education, and likely lack general computer literacy in the first place.
In short, yes. If a person does not like that amount of money, which is well below a skilled profession, then they should feel sufficiently motivated to devote time to developing a skill. I know that may sound cold, but it is just a reflection of basic economics.
And that is your problem, your basic economics doesn't necessarily need to be the only way that the world works.
Marketable skills should be better paid? Of course. Should it pay 10~15x more to be writing scripts at Google than to be frying burgers at some place? I don't think so.
If you care about people you should care that everyone has a minimum liveable wage, not that some should suffer because they can't/won't learn a high paying skill. What if instead of 10 to 15x a job at Google paid 5x what a burger flipper earns? It's still a quite good salary, incentive enough to not stop people from trying to learn better paying skills and would make the lives of people who aren't at that level a bit more comfortable.
> I sincerely don't understand if this was a jab towards me on some kind of "invisible hand of the market" argument or the complete opposite.
Between those two, it was the former. What I mean is that I don't see that people are obliged (_i.e._ should) trade with each other at all. If they nevertheless choose to do so, I don't see that every good or service should cost the same, or have a maximum difference in price.
There is this false assumption that people are paid what they are worth. People are paid what the market will bear. $28k is about 13/hour. For places like East TN this is not a horrible wage, and you can live on it. As a comparison, an entry-level position in the military, E1, makes less even when you account for allowances.
says E1-E3 are for basic training and first assignment, and E4 is $25k/yr. Plus I suppose (not sure) that military has much better health insurance (and other benefits, like food and maybe housing?) than Amazon warehouse employees
Housing is usually a shared apartment on base with high restrictions. Kinda like a college dorm room with lots of rules. Heath care is okay, it is free, which is nice, but military hospitals sometimes do not attract the best and brightest. We had some issues over the years. You get about $300 or so for a food allowance each month unless you live on base, then you get crappy chow hall food.
You will usually not make E4 until you hit your 3 year mark. The reg says you must have two years time in service. There are plenty of privates walking around Afghanistan right now.
> There is this false assumption that people are paid what they are worth.
Who thinks this? I don't know any adult who is that naive.
> People are paid what the market will bear.
In many industries, the employer side of the market is vastly more powerful than the employee. The employer can just pass on an employee asking for too much money; an employee may be facing weeks without a job, which is difficult for most people to afford.
In those situations, the market can bear quite a bit more than it has to, which is the reason minimum-wage requirements don't kill most industries.
> For places like East TN this is not a horrible wage, and you can live on it.
That's true if the government is protecting the employee with a safety nets, like welfare and ACA, and laws, like COBRA. A better-paid employee could save more money and provide their own safety net, as many high earners do with rainy-day accounts, investments, passive income, etc.
Because Amazon employees aren't necessarily saving enough to afford to build their own safety nets, taxpayers are effectively subsidizing Amazon.
> As a comparison, an entry-level position in the military, E1, makes less even when you account for allowances.
I'm not sure this is apples-to-apples because military benefits are substantial, and the most major downside to military service (the risk of being sent into armed combat) is very difficult to put into monetary terms.
I've taken economics courses. Real ones from an accredited University, even. The only thing eye opening about them was the revelation that the entire field has such math and science envy.
> That's true if the government is protecting the employee with a safety net, like welfare and ACA, and laws, like COBRA. A better-paid employee could save more money and provide their own safety net, as many high earners do with rainy-day accounts, investments, passive income, etc.
I personally would advocate taking away the safety net for able individuals and instituting a basic income. I think I would solve some of the market issues we are seeing with low wages. This will become more prevalent as automating gets cheaper.
I wish I could believe that you're being rhetorical, but it's evident by your other comments on this thread, and your handle, that your views are indeed as undistinguished and juvenile as they appear to be.
It's true that under capitalism, a laborer is only valued to the extent that their labor can be exploited to further the interest of capital, but it is incorrect to believe that this is the only possible system (it is not), or that it is somehow natural and correct (it is neither), or that the inherent value of Amazon's serfs is truly set by market forces (it is not) rather than the value of their own humanity.
Applauding Amazon or any multinational corporation for squeezing the maximum value out of workers is rather disgusting.
Most people do not define worth based on monetary cost; you are using a very narrow economic definition. If you can't get past that word, then please substitute "value", or "usefulness", or some other equivalent above.
If you ask someone if it was worth it to have a plumber fix a pipe, or a moving company to move their furniture, you would be comparing how much someone is getting paid versus you doing it yourself. An employer paying an employee is a business transaction, there is no other meaning than where the supply curve meets the demand curve, in a business activity, whether it be selling an item or buying labor.
Now, it should be noted that this only works when there are a multitude of buyers and sellers, but that problem is a different problem and should be recognized as such, instead of suggesting employers pay more than market rate, maybe we should be focusing our efforts on the real problem of monopsonies. Or if people are inherently "worth" something just for being, then I think it's more accurate to refer to that as "What are people entitled to" rather than "what are people worth" to avoid muddying up definitions.
If anything, this implies the opposite of your definition.
If you ask someone if it was worth it to have a plumber fix a pipe, and they say 'no', what they're telling you is whether or not their time is worth more than the price of paying a plumber. If it's possible for someone to believe they are getting more value out of a transaction then they are paying into it, than how can value be defined by what they pay?
If market prices actually determined something's value, then you would never ask if hiring a plumber was 'worth it', because by definition the answer would be yes. After all, by definition the plumber is worth what you pay them.
But you do ask, because most people recognize that when they define 'value', they are referring to something external which the market can provide them. Winning or losing in a transaction only works if you believe the value of what you get can be different than what you pay.
I dislike tautological definitions because they're not useful and they don't provide any new information. The claim that OP was trying to make was "what most people think of as value (for example, 'how much money an employee makes a company') does not correlate to pay." That's an interesting claim because by default people who are operating under principles of fairness might assume otherwise.
To say 'everyone is payed what they're worth by definition because what they're worth is what we pay them' supplies no information to anyone and is not an interesting claim to make. It's technically self-consistent, but brings nothing new to the discussion.
In the context of an employer paying an employee, worth/cost/price/value are all interchangeable. What did it cost to have that pipe fixed? Was it worth it to use contractor A versus contractor B (implied is was the price for A better than price for B given output)?
Value is always subjective. That's why both the seller and buyer gain in voluntary transactions. Eg. If you sell your used car for 2000, it means that you value 2000 in cash more than the old car. The buyer thinks the old car is better than holding 2000 in cash.
Thus the exchange benefits both. Adding value to both. The price is the same, but there are no losers. The same logic applies to voluntary job contracts ( non slavery). You don't have to like the salary, but that's your least worst option. economics has a term for it called 'substitute'. We all prefer to use the better substitute among choices in front of us. Doesn't mean the choice is the perfect one or a dream job.or even a living wage, just that that's the least worst option. also wages aren't determined by the capitalist plutocrats, it's determined by among others, competition between workers and their opportunity costs
The first part of your comment relates to an ideological view I disagree with, but at least is a fair argument to make in advocating we go about our lives and not concern ourselves with issues of low pay -- that the market is self-correcting and best to leave it alone. And I'd argue we structure our society in the way that we think achieves the outcomes we want. A normal debate to have.
But it does bother me when workers are pitted against one another, like you pitting underpaid warehouse workers against the military. We see this a lot. Fast food workers should try to negotiate for higher pay because teachers make X. Etc etc. If you think military pay is too low, then argue for higher military pay.
I think the pay is fair for the military. It is an entry-level job. I used it as an example since it is how I spent the first 10 years or so of my adulthood. Becuase I got paid crap and had horrible working conditions it gave me the motivation I needed to learn how to program computers. Now I am a highly paid SWE. If I was making 100k a year enlisted I would have never had the motivation to do what I am doing now.
To be clear, you're now arguing pay at Amazon is "crap" but that it's good because it gives people motivation to change careers. Glad we could clarify that.
$14 an hour is not as bad as you think. Median nursing salary in England = 23300 pounds = 32300 usd. So the median amazon warehouse worker makes 87% of what the median nurse makes in the U.K. Is that really so bad?
In the bay area, I'm currently paying 5 people 2k / mo and I've been paying them that much for about a year. They are incredibly hardworking and work about 12 hours / day. I mainly recruit from CalWorks (a public assistance program that provides cash aid and services to eligible families that have a child(ren) in the home), which is the same place that Amazon gets alot of their warehouse staff from.
Every-time I pay them, I feel a sense of guilt/discomfort. 2k / month is really hard to live on in the bay area, especially when you have kids. I want to pay them more, but its all I can afford with my current salary.
By "Work" they are learning and teaching each other JavaScript (Node, React, ReactNative, Vue, Redux, GraphQL) and building out some of my ideas. Hopefully they can find a job as a software engineer soon, it would change their lives permanently for the better!
The headline falls into what I would characterize as a "useless fact". The number is meant to manipulate you into clicking the article based on the belief that Amazon is unfairly compensating its employees. While I'm not an advocate for Amazon's work practices, this article provides no further analysis than a copy pasted line from a financial report. We need more context and analysis if you actually want to understand whether that number is or is not unreasonable.
> The number is meant to manipulate you into clicking the article based on the belief that Amazon is unfairly compensating its employees.
How is it manipulative to report on median pay for a company? This is as straightforwardly reported as possible, and not at all click-baity or manipulative. We shouldn't be afraid of basic facts that actually capture important information in an objective way. It's not a misleading number, it provides real insights into Amazon.
It's not made up at all, and data isn't hard to find.
There are two kinds of demand:
The kind I wrote to here is backed by available, liquid dollars. Amazon, and others, paying people effectively less than it costs them to exist and work, very sharply impacts this kind of demand. An easy example can be seen with entertainment. For most people, entertainment dollars are largely fixed. That fixed amount is very low, when few dollars are available, not dedicated to basic needs.
The other kind of demand is not backed by liquid dollars, and it's out there, growing, but not a meaningful part of any markets available to service it. That kind of demand is growing in the USA, with a clear majority of people now experiencing it.
There aren't any free lunches here. When we don't pay people enough to fund reasonable, modest lives, we are basically requiring everyone else to subsidize their labor, and that cost gets distributed nationwide.
If those people were businesses, they would have shut down by now. Since they are people, that would mean dying basically, and we prevent that with some safety net type spending and assistance.
Should those programs be a part of Amazon and others business model?
I feel they should not as that was never the intent. Those using them that way are doing all of us more harm than good too.
The number itself is not misleading or incorrect, it is just useless. If I wrote an article with the lede "Amazon pays market rates for labor" no one would be interested in reading it. The manipulation is leading you to believe that this information is important or of any use in judging their employment practices, which it is not.
Apple’s average salary, according to data research firm Paysa, was $100,733. That includes lots of retails workers at Apple’s stores (though obviously not the low-paid workers at contractors like Taiwan-based FoxConn Technology Co., which do a lot of the assembly work on Apple's products). At Google, which has no retail workers, the average employee salary is $190,854. At Facebook the average is $203,894.
We have just learned that the median salary of employees at Amazon.com Inc. is $28,446, excluding its chief executive officer and founder, Jeff Bezos.
That says at all.
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[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 213 ms ] threadAverage/mean is disproportionately influenced by a small number of highly paid employees.
In this case, the article is clearly demonstrating that despite Amazon's commanding market share, incredible wealth, and the largess bestowed upon their executives, some of their workforce is so poorly paid that they may not even make a living wage.
I would disagree with that. Imagine this dataset of salaries:
[1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10]
You have around half employees being paid like shit (1) and half being paid well (10), but the median will show a good salary (10).
>In Seattle, Amazon’s more than 45,000 employees are paid an average of more than $110,000, according to an analysis of individual worker data posted to job review site Glassdoor. The median, or midpoint, of Amazon’s 566,000 individual employee salaries worldwide stood far lower.
Granted, we are using average data from Glassdoor, whereas Amazon is self-reporting the median salary information. Plus, Amazon has part-time workers whose wages it annualizes to include the dataset. This makes me wonder though, are they counting the benefits that those workers are not receiving due to their lower number of hours?
Seattletimes.com
Don't they like Amazon out there or did the author fail an interview for Amazon or something?
Full time employees, at any position, should at least be paid a living wage commensurate to the local standard of living.
I'm not saying that to congratulate Amazon, I'm pointing out that there are more people involved than Amazon shareholders and employees, people who apparently put low prices ahead of any concerns they have over compensation at Amazon.
The equality of outcome controlled by the Government -- to even think about this concept is scary. This shit will def end with totalitarianism.
On the other hand, I think the richest country in the world shouldn't have people starving on the street and without basic healthcare. We already know how to square that circle.
1. Universal Healthcare that's not tied to the employer.
2. Increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit, make more people eligible, and make it easier for people to get it during the year to supplement their wages instead of at tax refund time. why go through the circuitous route of forcing companies to pay above market rates and raising prices on everyone? Just give working people money.
3. Better mass transportation to make getting to a job easier without having to have a car.
4. Subsidize child care. If conservatives truly believe in protecting life, caring about children means caring about the born - not just the unborn.
Richest country in the world? That’s quite arguable and very common mistake. It’s not fair to compare US to countries with negative GPD (this sentence is sarcastic, not literal).
I have been unfortunate enough to to leave in a state built on top of socialist agenda. Where the concept is extremely fragile. Once you increase the government’s role in lives of ordinary people (which sounds great in theory! As per Marx’s and Lenin’s paperwork) you are risking of turning the whole country into the ordinary DMV Office (one we all hate an avoid) wherever you go. That’s a nightmare that’s not that far from reality if we jump collectively on this socialist bandwagon.
As far as the DMV office that seems like one of the better run places. You go in, fill out paperwork, they give you a ticket, and you sit in the waiting room and when your number is called, you do an eye test, take a picture, swipe your card and you are in an out.
"130% of the poverty line for a three-person family is $2,213 a month, or about $26,600 a year." https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/a-quick-guide-...
It's above minimum wage. If we say that's not enough, we should raise minimum wage. Or we should create a society where it's possible for the people currently working for $26k/yr to have a stable roadmap to much higher earnings. But I don't think Amazon alone is to blame for the problem.
Edit: Here's an article claiming it's more than 10% in Ohio that are on SNAP: https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2018/01/08/amazon-e...
In, to quote Ken White, "pluck-my-banjo" Texas, that's a perfectly fine and livable sum. A dollar or two raise and you can probably start saving up for a house realistically. $14/hr is kingly.
Amazon warehouses are usually not in banjo-playing rural areas, but rather as close to major towns as is economically feasible for Amazon's rent bill.
This is neither a basic income nor a federal minimum wage problem. This is a lack of competing opportunities for minimally skilled workers problem. If these same workers had realistic job opportunities that paid well, then Amazon would have to raise wages (and pass some of that onto the consumers, but, that's relatively nothing).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Amazon_locations#Fulfi...
Can you leave the mock disgust behind? You probably live in an urban/suburban area just like the rest of us, yet your lecturing us.
$14 an hour is not as bad as you think. Median nursing salary in England = 23000 pounds = 32300 usd. So the median amazon warehouse worker makes 82.5% of what the median nurse makes in the U.K. Is that really so bad?
A lot of people here have preconceived notions about the living conditions of non-coastal areas and, to be frank, it gets old. OP is correct to lecture people because they are completely fucking correct in most cases.
I made that amount when I was in college, in the DC area, and most certainly survived just fine. Had I lived more rural in an area where entry level homes are <200k and not 600k+, that would of gone much farther.
And the banjo-playing is mostly a joke, especially in Texas. That being said, as an avid hiker, I spend a significant chunk of my time in places best labeled as "Nowhere, really".
Show me one person in this country with two kids who makes $14/hr and doesn't feel like they're struggling. College is easy, I survived on <$9/hr in college but you don't see me pretending that what is supportive of a college lifestyle and what is supportive of normal people with normal lives are the same thing.
>Had I lived more rural in an area where entry level homes are <200k and not 600k+, that would of gone much farther.
It would've gone a bit further but certainly not 'much.'
>That being said, as an avid hiker, I spend a significant chunk of my time in places best labeled as "Nowhere, really".
Somehow I think even you realize that using 'I hike' as a proxy for 'I have familiarity with rural areas' is pretty lame.
Of course, a decent house in that area runs $80-100k, whereas the same house in the area I live outside of Boston would cost $400k, and you couldn't buy a property with an equivalent amount of land attached at any price in the Bay area.
My son is making about $30K a year ($2000 a month) and I helped him do his budget so I know what his expenses are:
Rent - $600
Car note - $300
Car Insurance - $250
Utilities - $350
That leaves him about $500 a month for "everything else".
Yes that puts him on the edge and thanks to the ACA he's still covered under our insurance until he turns 26 and if he needs a car repair we help him.
Two conclusions:
I think we should have universal health care as a nation.
If we had better mass transit, people wouldn't need cars and it would make finding a job easier.
According to the gross up calculator at psycheckcity.com he would need to make around $16.50/hour or $34000 a year to have enough cushion for things that happen. Strangely enough, that was also the salary I needed 20 years ago before I could make it on my own without asking my parents for help. I made that my first year out of college as a computer operator.
This is in metro Atlanta not podunk nowhere USA.
And if you want good versions of these things, you're more likely to find them in coastal urban cities, where basic cost of living (food and housing) is extremely high.
Remarking that "oh they'll be fine over there" when people are fleeing there for better resources is consigning a segment of our population to a permanent underclass status.
1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/08/17/the-s...
You've got to get somewhere around 30-40 miles out of the city to buy a house on $14 an hour (assuming the 20% of income rule of thumb).
Kivas are nice and all, but they can't pick and they definitely can't stow. They could probably move pallets, but couldn't palletize, and having them run around the facilities at the necessary speed dragging a train of pallets would be a safety hazard.
They are really good at reading QR codes and turning at 90 degree angles, though.
There are places in India where they pay 100 men pennies to dig a trench. Sure, they could buy a machine so 1 person could do the work of 100, but if the machine costs 100k and the guy who is trained to operate it makes 10 an hour, the payoff time is too long to justify. If the guys digging the trench demand 5 an hour, the barrier to the investment goes down significantly.
This is why, if a 15 dollar minimum wage is passed nation wide, you will never order from a person at McDonald's again... and any niche restaurant that does use people will cost significantly more. A large business like McDonalds benefits from this because they can absorb the cost. A small business can't, so big corporation's have less competition and can make even larger profits because they have less downward pressure on their prices.
https://youtu.be/cLVCGEmkJs0
With enough money, they could probably reduce the amount of warehouse workers needed.
Other facility jobs, like picking and stowing, run up against vision and fine motor skill problems that turn out to be really difficult for AI and robotics to solve. They'll be automated eventually, but I don't think it will be soon. I might be wrong, though.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-singapore-robots-ikea/fla...
Is that pretty typical for a person who is say, in the richest 5-100 people in the world to spend on security? What kind of protection does that buy?
100 * 2 * 16 * 365 = $1.16 million
Count in that they need travel, food and hotels along with Bezos, and it’s not unreasonable or excessive.
Probably includes private air travel and some bodyguards.
Many are not even making that much.
I got the $14 per hour figure from the annual income reported as the median assuming 2080 work hours per year.
No idea if they operate in Brazil, but using it as an example, USD $28,446 in Brazil is a great salary.
If they pay, say, R$ 30,000.00/year, I doubt they'd report anything other than the direct conversion to USD.
I am a software developer for one of the larger companies and also an Army Reservist. When I go away to do Army stuff I frequently encounter people who work much harder and earn much less than I do in their civilian jobs. Is that fair? I would say, it doesn't matter.
I tell those people how being a software developer generally isn't super intense or stressful and you make all this money, but yet the people I tell this to generally don't want to write software. The disparity is that a senior software development position isn't immediately free like a dinner mint at the end of dinner. You have to practice writing software really hard and really invest your time into solving hard problems. In all my experience talking about wage inequality the ultimate disparity that always arises is time spent investing in yourself without any reasonable compensation.
EDIT: I did not start programming until age 28. I was already married and had two children.
One was raising two children- an infant and a toddler- and if he wasn't actively coding, he was reading or listening to something programming related.
For now, at least, programming is a highly sought-after skill, and with determination and effort, you can get into it. There really aren't any other barriers than (1) saving up for a cheap computer, and (2) having reliable internet access.
Being a software engineer requires a particular mindset, a lot of time and exposure, and people willing to support that. I was lucky enough to have all of the above, but most folks do not.
I'm in the midst of helping a friend who is currently a welder move into software engineering. He's extremely intelligent and has the brain for it, but it's also taken literal years, finding him a capable dev machine (a used macbook air, donated from another engineer), tutoring him (me and another engineer, going on for two years now), and now he's going to a bootcamp (which cost thousands of dollars he didn't have in his pocket).
He is still going to have to find an actual job and make the move from bootcamp to real life. That's another involved process that will require multiple people helping him.
And again, this is a young white male who has a very high aptitude for this.
It's a bit more work than "just invest in yourself!". The average computer user has difficulty searching their own email or resetting a password. Even those with natural aptitude require help - and not a trivial amount either.
why do you bring up race and gender?
There are 2 sides to this. And the positive side of having something to work towards is usually not mentioned.
I can give you an example from Europe, in a country which is homogeneous ethnically. We all went to the same public schools and we had the same opportunities. At 30 - some of us make more than 10 times than others. There is no system of oppression which caused this. It was simply the market which has imposed this difference. And the market is at an equilibrium - because the people who earn higher wages, pay a LOT of money for healthcare, the social pension system and other social security things. If the gov would increase this further in order to close the "gap" between high earners and the have-nots/less, the high earners would just leave the country (they already do this to a degree).
Why not let the market decide? This is not about privilege and oppression and I am surprised that over the pond people have not learned from Europe's history.
There is also the side that by having a system in place that rewards effort - people strive for more everyday and this leads to prosperity. This country has been under communism and during those times no one was struggling for anything, because they were paid just the same.
He doesn't have to breathe toxic fumes that screw up his health. That's kind of a big plus.
He can likely continue programming to a far older age. That might be a big plus.
I can continue.
How should they move into software engineering?
Marketable skills should be better paid? Of course. Should it pay 10~15x more to be writing scripts at Google than to be frying burgers at some place? I don't think so.
If you care about people you should care that everyone has a minimum liveable wage, not that some should suffer because they can't/won't learn a high paying skill. What if instead of 10 to 15x a job at Google paid 5x what a burger flipper earns? It's still a quite good salary, incentive enough to not stop people from trying to learn better paying skills and would make the lives of people who aren't at that level a bit more comfortable.
Remember the human.
What is this "should" you speak of?
I sincerely don't understand if this was a jab towards me on some kind of "invisible hand of the market" argument or the complete opposite.
Between those two, it was the former. What I mean is that I don't see that people are obliged (_i.e._ should) trade with each other at all. If they nevertheless choose to do so, I don't see that every good or service should cost the same, or have a maximum difference in price.
says E1-E3 are for basic training and first assignment, and E4 is $25k/yr. Plus I suppose (not sure) that military has much better health insurance (and other benefits, like food and maybe housing?) than Amazon warehouse employees
Who thinks this? I don't know any adult who is that naive.
> People are paid what the market will bear.
In many industries, the employer side of the market is vastly more powerful than the employee. The employer can just pass on an employee asking for too much money; an employee may be facing weeks without a job, which is difficult for most people to afford.
In those situations, the market can bear quite a bit more than it has to, which is the reason minimum-wage requirements don't kill most industries.
> For places like East TN this is not a horrible wage, and you can live on it.
That's true if the government is protecting the employee with a safety nets, like welfare and ACA, and laws, like COBRA. A better-paid employee could save more money and provide their own safety net, as many high earners do with rainy-day accounts, investments, passive income, etc.
Because Amazon employees aren't necessarily saving enough to afford to build their own safety nets, taxpayers are effectively subsidizing Amazon.
> As a comparison, an entry-level position in the military, E1, makes less even when you account for allowances.
I'm not sure this is apples-to-apples because military benefits are substantial, and the most major downside to military service (the risk of being sent into armed combat) is very difficult to put into monetary terms.
https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/microec...
If you have an argument against anything I've said (rather than condescension and a veiled insult), I'd be genuinely interested to know what it is.
I personally would advocate taking away the safety net for able individuals and instituting a basic income. I think I would solve some of the market issues we are seeing with low wages. This will become more prevalent as automating gets cheaper.
It's true that under capitalism, a laborer is only valued to the extent that their labor can be exploited to further the interest of capital, but it is incorrect to believe that this is the only possible system (it is not), or that it is somehow natural and correct (it is neither), or that the inherent value of Amazon's serfs is truly set by market forces (it is not) rather than the value of their own humanity.
Applauding Amazon or any multinational corporation for squeezing the maximum value out of workers is rather disgusting.
Most people do not define worth based on monetary cost; you are using a very narrow economic definition. If you can't get past that word, then please substitute "value", or "usefulness", or some other equivalent above.
Now, it should be noted that this only works when there are a multitude of buyers and sellers, but that problem is a different problem and should be recognized as such, instead of suggesting employers pay more than market rate, maybe we should be focusing our efforts on the real problem of monopsonies. Or if people are inherently "worth" something just for being, then I think it's more accurate to refer to that as "What are people entitled to" rather than "what are people worth" to avoid muddying up definitions.
If you ask someone if it was worth it to have a plumber fix a pipe, and they say 'no', what they're telling you is whether or not their time is worth more than the price of paying a plumber. If it's possible for someone to believe they are getting more value out of a transaction then they are paying into it, than how can value be defined by what they pay?
If market prices actually determined something's value, then you would never ask if hiring a plumber was 'worth it', because by definition the answer would be yes. After all, by definition the plumber is worth what you pay them.
But you do ask, because most people recognize that when they define 'value', they are referring to something external which the market can provide them. Winning or losing in a transaction only works if you believe the value of what you get can be different than what you pay.
I dislike tautological definitions because they're not useful and they don't provide any new information. The claim that OP was trying to make was "what most people think of as value (for example, 'how much money an employee makes a company') does not correlate to pay." That's an interesting claim because by default people who are operating under principles of fairness might assume otherwise.
To say 'everyone is payed what they're worth by definition because what they're worth is what we pay them' supplies no information to anyone and is not an interesting claim to make. It's technically self-consistent, but brings nothing new to the discussion.
But it does bother me when workers are pitted against one another, like you pitting underpaid warehouse workers against the military. We see this a lot. Fast food workers should try to negotiate for higher pay because teachers make X. Etc etc. If you think military pay is too low, then argue for higher military pay.
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9N...
Source on median salary: https://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Job=Registered_Nurse_(R...
Every-time I pay them, I feel a sense of guilt/discomfort. 2k / month is really hard to live on in the bay area, especially when you have kids. I want to pay them more, but its all I can afford with my current salary.
By "Work" they are learning and teaching each other JavaScript (Node, React, ReactNative, Vue, Redux, GraphQL) and building out some of my ideas. Hopefully they can find a job as a software engineer soon, it would change their lives permanently for the better!
You're doing incredible work though. You're allowing them to essentially apprenticeship with you to learn software development. Bravo sir
How is it manipulative to report on median pay for a company? This is as straightforwardly reported as possible, and not at all click-baity or manipulative. We shouldn't be afraid of basic facts that actually capture important information in an objective way. It's not a misleading number, it provides real insights into Amazon.
Amazon, right along with other big players are not paying people well enough to make it.
Increasing numbers of them don't, and that costs all of us while eroding demand needed for the economy to grow and perform for all of us.
In a very real sense, failure to fund a better, more equitable, just standard of living means it won't exist at all.
Flat out, it is unacceptable to make billions while a majority are on public assistance.
There are two kinds of demand:
The kind I wrote to here is backed by available, liquid dollars. Amazon, and others, paying people effectively less than it costs them to exist and work, very sharply impacts this kind of demand. An easy example can be seen with entertainment. For most people, entertainment dollars are largely fixed. That fixed amount is very low, when few dollars are available, not dedicated to basic needs.
The other kind of demand is not backed by liquid dollars, and it's out there, growing, but not a meaningful part of any markets available to service it. That kind of demand is growing in the USA, with a clear majority of people now experiencing it.
There aren't any free lunches here. When we don't pay people enough to fund reasonable, modest lives, we are basically requiring everyone else to subsidize their labor, and that cost gets distributed nationwide.
If those people were businesses, they would have shut down by now. Since they are people, that would mean dying basically, and we prevent that with some safety net type spending and assistance.
Should those programs be a part of Amazon and others business model?
I feel they should not as that was never the intent. Those using them that way are doing all of us more harm than good too.
I can only imagine it shunts the median up a long way.