[harryh]

I do not believe that this is true.

Again, profit margins for this sort of work are tiny. Adding significant wage costs would almost certainly consume a huge percentage of profits at which point the suppliers of capital will invest their money elsewhere.

If you are going to make such a strong claim, you probably need to back it up with data.

[mikeash]

Google Amazon profit ($11 billion and change last year), workforce size (650,000ish) and divide. That gives you a lower bound for the worst case where all Amazon employees are warehouse workers.

[harryh]

Amazon earns a lot of money from quite a few things that have nothing to do with warehouse workers. In particular I have read that half their profits come from AWS. I don't think that is enough data to support your claim.

A better set of numbers to look at might be Walmarts (more of a pure retail company). They make maybe 10B in profit per year (it varies a little) with 2M workers. That's $5,000 per worker which isn't much wiggle room.

[mikeash]

Money is fungible. Amazon can afford to pay better. The only data you need to know that is what I gave.

You’re giving a reason why they might not want to. I don’t think anyone here is arguing that they want to. If they wanted to, they would be doing it already.

[fuzz4lyfe]

So they are to run at a loss? Why not simply close down the warehouses and liberate these poor people from these terrible jobs?

[mikeash]

Who said anything about running at a loss? I’m just stating that they can pay more by taking less of a profit, “the market” doesn’t stop them.

[fuzz4lyfe]

They only make $5000 per worker per year or so, given that the stock market has consistent returns of about 7% lately it's getting to the point that it would be better to put that money there was opposed to paying workers with it for such small returns.