{"id":239413,"date":"2018-04-20T07:43:53","date_gmt":"2018-04-20T05:43:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=239413"},"modified":"2018-04-20T07:43:53","modified_gmt":"2018-04-20T05:43:53","slug":"amazon-reveals-the-median-pay-for-its-employees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/internet\/239413\/amazon-reveals-the-median-pay-for-its-employees\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon reveals the median pay for its employees"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The big numerical reveal on Wednesday was Amazon.com Inc finally\u00a0spilling the beans\u00a0on the number of Prime members (more than 100 million). It also disclosed another\u00a0number that shows how much it relies on an\u00a0army of people moving physical merchandise around the world:\u00a0$28,446.<\/p>\n

That’s\u00a0the median annual compensation\u00a0of Amazon employees. Amazon\u00a0reported\u00a0this number for the first time under a new requirement that companies\u00a0disclose\u00a0the\u00a0gap\u00a0between pay\u00a0for the rank-and-file and the person in the corner office. (Amazon chief executive officer Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest person, reported total compensation of $1.68 million last year.<\/p>\n

As in prior years, he didn’t take a stock bonus, collected a salary of $81,840 and had $1.6 million in personal security\u00a0costs that Amazon covered.)<\/p>\n

That\u00a0median pay figure is skewed by the large number\u00a0of Amazon’s more than 560,000 employees who work in its package warehouses, distribution centers, Whole Foods grocery stores and other places far from the ping-pong tables, endless free kale chips and yoga rooms of\u00a0Silicon Valley’s rich tech campuses. Compare Amazon’s median pay with\u00a0Facebook Inc’s\u00a0$240,430.<\/p>\n

Just a reminder that this means half of Amazon’s workers make more than $28,446, and half make less.<\/p>\n

The company doesn’t have to disclose average pay, which would probably be skewed higher by the smaller number of Amazon’s highly paid tech workers.\u00a0In a statement, Amazon said its median pay figure includes people in more than 50 countries and part-time employees.<\/p>\n

The company also said it offers “highly competitive wage and benefits.”<\/p>\n

Amazon likes to\u00a0boast\u00a0about its prowess in job creation, and the company’s workforce has\u00a0exploded\u00a0in recent years.\u00a0Amazon is\u00a0now the second-largest private employer in the US behind Walmart Inc In Bezos’s\u00a0annual letter to shareholders, also released on Wednesday, he again highlighted\u00a0Amazon’s investment in infrastructure and its ability to create jobs both directly and indirectly.<\/p>\n

Bezos\u00a0said Amazon directly created more than 130,000 jobs in 2017, not including people the company absorbed from acquired companies such as Whole Foods.<\/p>\n

That means Amazon brought on board more people in one year than the entire workforce of Google parent company Alphabet Inc, which said it had more than 80,000 employees at the end of last year.<\/p>\n

“Our new jobs cover a wide range of professions, from artificial intelligence scientists to packaging specialists to fulfillment center associates,” Bezos\u00a0wrote.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The company’s median compensation figure, however, shows that at least by volume, Amazon’s workforce\u00a0tilts more toward\u00a0the fulfillment center associates than AI specialists.<\/p>\n

There’s long been a debate about the quality of jobs at Amazon\u00a0and whether cities and states should\u00a0roll out the red carpet\u00a0for Amazon to open package warehouses in their backyards.<\/p>\n

Amazon’s median pay works out to about\u00a0$14 an hour, assuming a full-time worker at 52 weeks a year.<\/p>\n

That’s a solid wage in many parts of the US and not so much in other parts.\u00a0For comparison, Target Corp recently announced plans to pay at least\u00a0$15 an hour\u00a0by the end of 2020.\u00a0Those people questioning the quality of Amazon’s jobs just got a new data point for their critiques.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Read: A first look at Amazon\u2019s new offices in Cape Town<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The big numerical reveal on Wednesday was Amazon.com Inc finally spilling the beans on the number of Prime members (more than 100 million). It also disclosed another number that shows how much it relies on an army of people moving physical merchandise around the world: $28,446.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":217921,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9882],"tags":[657,26],"class_list":["post-239413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-amazon","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239413"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":239425,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239413\/revisions\/239425"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}