
Amazon worker’s median pay in 2017: $28,446 - danso
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-workers-median-pay-in-2017-28446/
======
austincheney
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.

~~~
vorpalhex
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.

~~~
el_cid
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.

~~~
bsder
> 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 can continue.

------
elicash
This means a very sizable percentage of Amazon's workforce (though not quite
half) could qualify for SNAP.

"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-...](https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/a-quick-guide-to-
snap-eligibility-and-benefits)

~~~
epicureanideal
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.

~~~
SolarNet
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.

~~~
vorpalhex
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).

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
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.

~~~
vorpalhex
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".

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
>when I was in college

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.

~~~
megaman22
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.

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
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.

~~~
scarface74
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.

This is in metro Atlanta not podunk nowhere USA.

------
songzme
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!

~~~
sol_remmy
Don't forget that their cash assistance/stipend from CalWorks counts as part
of their salary. So their real take home is 2k/month + monthly stipend.

You're doing incredible work though. You're allowing them to essentially
apprenticeship with you to learn software development. Bravo sir

------
pg_bot
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.

~~~
elicash
> 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.

~~~
ddingus
Right.

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.

~~~
pravinva
Demand is eroding? Any data to back up the wildly made up fact?

~~~
ddingus
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.

------
colek42
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.

~~~
lotsofpulp
The definition of what something is worth is what the market will bear.

~~~
danShumway
That sounds like a tautology to me.

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.

~~~
lotsofpulp
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.

~~~
danShumway
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.

------
nathanaldensr
This is a great article for demonstrating how mean and median can be used to
manipulate perception.

~~~
jaysonelliot
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.

~~~
goshx
That median is not US only.

------
bluedino
>> 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?

~~~
hjnilsson
If we assume a reasonable bodyguard charges $100 an hour, and he has 2
bodyguards 16 hours a day (or 4 in 2 by 8 hours).

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.

~~~
duck
And I would assume he has at some sort of protection around the clock, so that
seems pretty low actually.

------
sol_remmy
$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?

Source on median salary:
[https://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Job=Registered_Nurse_(R...](https://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Job=Registered_Nurse_\(RN\)/Salary)

------
elgenie
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.

~~~
krapp
>So the median Amazon worker by pay is working in a warehouse, probably entry-
level or thereabouts, and is making about $14 an hour.

Many are not even making that much.

~~~
elgenie
That's how a median works, yes.

I got the $14 per hour figure from the annual income reported as the median
assuming 2080 work hours per year.

------
goshx
Worldwide.

No idea if they operate in Brazil, but using it as an example, USD $28,446 in
Brazil is a great salary.

~~~
matheus2740
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.

~~~
goshx
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.

------
swebs
Here's the source report in question:

[http://phx.corporate-
ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9N...](http://phx.corporate-
ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9NjkyMDE5fENoaWxkSUQ9NDAyOTkzfFR5cGU9MQ==&t=1)

------
throwaway637h
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.

~~~
seattle_spring
And, presumably, far lower housing costs and overall CoL.

~~~
scarface74
And probably universal healthcare, and stricter worker protections.

------
oliwarner
Consider how much of the bottom tier is excluded by making drivers, cleaners,
etc work as self employed contractors instead of "workers".

I can only imagine it shunts the median up a long way.

------
DimitarIbra9987
nicely done Jeff Bezos, richest person in this world.

~~~
unpopular42
Bezos' duty is to keep costs low and profits high and indeed he does his job
well, just look at their stock.

~~~
DimitarIbra9
and exploit employees.

~~~
randyrand
Exploit = "make full use of and derive benefit from (a resource)". Sounds like
a very good thing for a company to do. No waste.

------
sputniq
So much for equality. I guess jeff bezos just thinks it normal

~~~
jdoliner
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.

~~~
the_mitsuhiko
I’m pretty sure it was about the amount paid not that not everybody is paid
the same.

~~~
unpopular42
So what exactly is wrong with this amount? And what amount would be the
correct amount?

~~~
krapp
> And what amount would be the correct amount?

Full time employees, at any position, should at least be paid a living wage
commensurate to the local standard of living.

