Amazon to Create 100,000 New Jobs in U.S. In Next 18 Months
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
1) Identify large trends or the goals of powerful people.
2) Release feed prewritten BS to media that describes what you already planned to do in terms that aligns it with the above goals.
3) Profit(or don't get in a pissing match with our appearance above all else President Elect)
"Amazon.com Inc. revealed plans to hire more than 100,000 people in the U.S. in the next 18 months, grabbing the spotlight as President-elect Donald Trump pushes companies to employ more Americans."
What the heck does this have to do with Donald Trump?
Edit: Haha, never mind, looks like the Trump Administration is already taking credit:
"The announcement was made after the president-elect met with heads of several other tech companies and urge them to keep their jobs and production inside the United States," Sean Spicer, the incoming press secretary, said on a call with media outlets Thursday. "The president-elect was pleased to have played a role in that decision by Amazon."
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-12/amazon-to...
This part also seemed off:
"What’s more, the hiring spree could do less to help the U.S. economy than is immediately apparent. Research groups have argued that the company kills more jobs than it creates because it has disrupted the traditional retail industry."
If Amazon getting into groceries and same-day delivery fuels a lot of the hiring growth, you're not killing mom and pops, you're competing w/Wal-Mart and Target. And I have to imagine that an Amazon warehouse and a bunch of delivery drivers is more jobs than a big-box.
It's probably fairly close - operating a checkout lane is easier than delivering packages, but stocking an open-to-the-public store is harder than loading things onto delivery trucks. Figuring that out is fun, but honestly a waste of time unless you really want to get into operations research.
The outside view is way better approach. Amazon will compete with Target on some combination of price and quality. In other words, Amazon will do some combination of being more efficient (= cause fewer dollars to be spent on labor) and providing new services that customers are willing to pay for (= cause more dollars to be spent on labor). So the two things we need to actually look at is how much a customer will spend monthly shopping at Target vs Amazon delivery, and average hourly rate of the employees required to provide marginal service. The first determines whether the economy is doing more work in terms of dollar value, the second determines how the growth is distributed between increased employment vs increased wages.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was apparently very voluble, and aimed many of his points at how U.S. companies had a hard time succeeding in China, and what the government could do about it.
Considering Trump has threatened to upend Sino-U.S. relations over the Taiwan issue, the answer may be, not so much.
1. http://www.recode.net/2016/12/15/13976806/immigration-matern...
Today it feels opposite that the US is losing that leverage and China doesn't really care. Perhaps I am wrong.
I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. It mostly means that in terms of GDP per capita China has been catching up which means many millions being lifted out of poverty.
headline can also be "Amazon plans to hire 100,000 below minimum wage workers in light of relaxed labor laws"
Not saying it couldn't be better, or the timing isn't suspect in regards to maximizing PR, but don't forget the humans this will positively impact.
The more important factor is competition. If Amazon hires 10 people, you can bet tradition retail needed at least 11 to do the same amount of work. If Amazon is undercutting them, those businesses will die off, and 11 people will be out of work.
If Amazon wants to hire 100,000 logistics/fulfillment employees, you can bet there's more than 100,000 people who will be out of work elsewhere.
Bias note: I spent 5 years making software for Amazon's logistics division.
That's the actually important question. If Amazon is convincing people that delivery service is worth paying a premium for, that's a new product/service that the economy is producing and employing people for, and is itself economic growth. If Amazon is instead more efficient and competing on price, then they're only freeing up the ability for the displaced to do productive economic work elsewhere in the economy.
That doesn't sound like contract work to me.
Or under minimum wage: Amazon Mechanical Turk [1]. Which is below the minimum wage of a lot of countries (at the very least the entire Western world as we know it) [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Mechanical_Turk
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_count...
That is exactly what they do in the UK. Deliveries are outsourced to other companies (but still under the Amazon Delivery Network brand). Those companies then hire people as contractors, pay them close to minimum wage, but use every trick possible to ensure they see as little of that as possible (i.e. pay reductions when aggressive delivery targets are not met, charging extortionate rates for vehicle hire and insurance).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2016/amazon-insi...
Anyway, the states would tout "new jobs" when they won but wouldn't talk about the ones they lost. The jobs weren't new at all either.
Turns out that all the effort both states put in basically came out to a wash so both states were trying to setup a truce to avoid poaching and having to keep offering incentives.
If you make enough jobs the Fed will induce a recession:
https://hbr.org/1996/01/a-country-is-not-a-company (an article I can imagine quoting extensively from now on...)
You can make a company bigger and more prosperous by employing more people, theoretically, forever. A country doesn't work like that - but Trump probably thinks it does.
Even if this were true, companies creating more jobs wouldn't necessarily be a good idea.
I feel the jobs argument is outdated. As of right now the fed is unable to induce inflation despite huge amounts money pumped into the market. In other words the fed lost its ability to control employment.
It also ignores the productivity gains from increased demands of bigger markets created by free trade. Yes, productivity gains destroy jobs, which is the opposite of what the globalists like to say. However this is essentiallly a Luddite argument. Had we stuck with it we would still live in an agrarian society. Reducing costs stemming from increased productivity affords more expendable income, creating new markets and new jobs in them. So free trade has the effect of promoting productivity, which I argue is the same as scientific and technological progress of our civilization.
That was probably true 2-6 years ago but since then the Fed has raised rates in Dec 2015[1], Dec 2016[2] and shows signs of raising them again (meaning that inflationary policies are doing something). The "liquidity trap" is mostly over.
> It also ignores the productivity gains from increased demands of bigger markets created by free trade.
How can an individual gain productivity from increased trade? Without increased education or new technologies, individual productivity (and in aggregate, world productivity) will not be affected by changes in trade policy.
[1]: https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/monetary/201...
[2]: https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/monetary/201...
Couldn't a mining company that can now afford more drill rigs because of cheaper imports be more productive as a result?
Low interest rates creates the mortgage crisis.
If there is "full" employment, then low interest rates cause a massive problem because it prints money that has nothing to buy. It is appropriate to turn off the money spigot when the economy has no more room to grow.
Those saying this is not politics fail to realize that companies that reach a certain threshold size have no choice but to play politics. If they don't, avaricious politicians will take the politics to them. This is the lesson Google learned from Microsoft, and Bezos didn't fail to learn it.
A bad job with no prospects of turning into anything else, is pretty close to as bad as unemployment to my mind.
WE get to be selective of "does this job help my career trajectory" but not everyone. This MAY be life changing for those 100,000 individuals.
Too many people are stuck in the trap of working for a terrible employer that beats them down psychologically, treats them like dirt, and forces them to jump through endless hoops just to keep their crappy job.
My statement is easy to understand, a majority of claimed 100,000 jobs might be that desirable, even though they are jobs indeed. As other comments put, those jobs help little in the person future career, and is not something you can do for a long time either.
What & where & who hires for Z?
"“It’s a very powerful headline, and the timing certainly makes Trump look good,”
The staffing up isn’t particularly surprising for a company moving into multiple categories from groceries, hardware and video to fashion and cloud services. But the move could appease Trump, who tangled with Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos during the election campaign.
Is it a political move? How couldn't it be? Is it somthing to lambaste about? No, it's basic job creation in the US, something we really need to sustain the America us cosmopolitans have forgotten about.
When you consider the wage of Amazon warehouse workers, it's a lot less than 2-5% of wage growth, which is what matters.
these jobs will displace slash replace other jobs. calling the jobs created growth without looking at what the new industry destroys is like going to the casino and bragging about how much you won, while withholding how much you "invested."
I'm 95% confident he is going to be a disaster (and so will this Republican congress) but maybe this country needs to experience some pain to understand that both sides aren't equal. Nevertheless I can't lay blame until action is actually taken and the results are known.
Be careful, your hubris is making conclusions you don't have facts for. You're more than likely right, but its a bad habit to start.
Exhibit B: Mass-terminating appointees before they're formally replaced leaving huge parts of the government rudderless for months.
Nearly everything about this presidency is off the charts batshit insane. There is no way this thing would pass a political breathalizer.
Have you listened to anything he's said? Did George W. Bush teach people nothing?
I suggest you become more of a student of history. At very least it will leave you with bigger charts.
There's been candidates for office with crazier ideas, with fewer qualifications, with more scandals, but none have ever been elected before. Ths path is well trod by tinpot dictators, not US presidents.
In terms of US history, the only thing missing is Trump killing someone in a duel on the White House lawn to really put this over the top.
John Quincy Adams, he called the sitting presidents wife a whore during his campaign. I'd argue Hillary Clinton had more scandals prior to office, but she lost.
>Name another president that's won the electoral college but lost the popular vote by over two million votes
Name another president who ran when there was over 310 million Americans.
>Name another president who's actively hostile against several major branches of government
Thomas Jefferson, Ronald Reagan, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight "beware the military industrial complex" Eisenhower, and JFK.
>Name another president who's apparently been collaborating with a major foreign adversary.
Well if the standard of evidence on that is "unnamed sources" and top secret documents nobody is going to see for a few decades. All of them according to my unnamed source in my top secret document.
In the interest of fairness may I note that Hillary Clinton's state department approved a sale of 20% of this nations uranium to Russia and shortly thereafter she received a few million dollar donation to the Clinton foundation from a Russian weapons manufacturer who had directly benefited from that deal. Clearly she didn't think Russia was a threat when she was cashing their checks.
Having a different management style is just that: different, not "batshit insane". You really can't judge until the results are in.
For example, people questioned the way Job's ran his teams at Apple. At some point in time that was "batshit insane". To be frank, even today Job's management style is "batshit insane", but no one can question it because it worked.
Building a rocket ship company that planned to steal away revenue from Lockheed-Martin was "batshit insane", but Musk was able to pull it off.
Another example, losing half your army trekking through the Alps with elephants was "batshit insane", but Hannibal was one of the only generals in existence that could have destroyed Rome. Hannibal may not be the best example though, he happened to be outsmarted at the last minute, and acted emotionally rather than continue his objective - losing everything in the process.
I'm just trying to explain to you (while Trump will likely cause WW3): In general by jumping to conclusions, prior to having the data, you do yourself and the world a disservice.
How are you determining what parts of disasters are attributed to the presidency/government vs things only lightly influenced by that? We can agree that hurricanes in one year aren't caused by presidential actions that same year. What about epidemics? Large economic shifts?
I don't mean this as Trump support, just wondering how people get things like "95% confidence" and "disaster". How do they objectively define these things and avoid their biases?
Watch me. ;)
> In a call with reporters on Thursday Trump spokesman Sean Spicer said his boss was happy to play a part in Amazon’s decision
Did he actually though?
> You have a good company hiring people in an area where a lot of tech companies tend to be outsourcing people,” he said. “So it’s very positive, political or not. It’s still 100,000 more people in the U.
Amazon wasn't one of the companies outsourcing people. They have been hiring engineers by the boatload for years.
I'd guess the large majority of these jobs aren't going to be tech jobs anyway.
> Over the past five years, Amazon says it has created more than 150,000 jobs in the U.S.
So they are just over doubling the hiring rate? about 30k/year before to about 70k now?
> After Trump’s victory, Bezos tweeted: “I for one give him my most open mind.”
Good lesson from a smart guy.
They're hiring 100,000 people because they can put them to work and make a profit.
They NOT hiring 100,000 people to make Trump happy or make favors in the administration.
B) They've only stated their intent to hire people. They haven't actually done it.
C) Is this net +100K or just 100K new hires? It's not clear if this is including churn or not.
All jobs created in the next 4 years will be because of Trump, and all jobs lost will be because of Clinton/Bush/Obama.
Or Ford, which was never moving the jobs in question out of the country.
Or something else?
This is getting silly. It is 100% in line for all politicians to claim credit for everything they can, and many things they can't.
And when Obama started tweeting before the 2008 election, everyone thought he was so "with it" in terms of technology. Trump does it and it's a problem.
[1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/12/...
That's cause he goes on 3am rants that sound like they were written by a 10 year old.