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According to Wikipedia their profit was 3B last year. If they have 566,000 full-time employees at 2,000 hours each, that is 3 billion USD they have to distribute to 1,132,000,000 hours, so they could raise the wage of each employee evenly by around $3 an hour, and would then make $0 instead of $3B.

When a company has this many employees (compared to some other large tech companies like Facebook with only 25,000), the math isn't as nice as you might imagine. Amazon has very low margins.



For the vast majority of their logistical staff, $3 an hour more would likely be a substantial raise. Or at least equal to an extra yearly raise.


I've never been a big fan of Amazon OR Jeff Bezos' libertarian nightmare - but, seeing it framed like this, in terms of a private entity providing employment for so many people and for little profit makes me question my own beliefs. It's amazing what a little profit at scale adds up to.




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