"Today I want to give credit where credit is due," Sanders said in response to the announcement. "What Mr. Bezos has done today is not only enormously important for Amazon's hundreds of thousands of employees, it could well be, and I think it will be, a shot heard around the world."
Amazon said it will also start advocating for an increase to the federal minimum wage.
Amazon's starting pay varies by location — $10 an hour at a warehouse in Austin, Texas, for example, and $13.50 an hour in Robbinsville, New Jersey. For 2017, the median Amazon employee earned just under $28,500, according to company filings. Bezos earned $1.7 million.
Amazon is also raising wages for British employees to a minimum of £10.50 ($13.61) for workers in London and £9.50 ($12.31) in the rest of the country.
"We listened to our critics, thought hard about what we wanted to do, and decided we want to lead," Bezos said in a statement. "We're excited about this change and encourage our competitors and other large employers to join us."
Retail rival Target announced in its holiday hiring release it would raise minimum hourly wage to $15 by 2020. Walmart announced plans in January to raise its minimum wage to $11.
The announcement comes ahead of Amazon's annual holiday hiring push. Last year the e-commerce giant said it would hire 120,000 temporary employees for the holiday season.
In August, national wage growth posted its biggest increase of the economic recovery, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Payroll gains beat expectations and the unemployment rate held near a generational low of 3.9 percent — making holiday hiring tougher for many retailers.
—CNBC's Tom Rotunno and Jeff Cox contributed to this report. The Associated Press also contributed.
WATCH: Jeff Bezos is so much bigger than Amazon — a look at his extraordinary empire
boodleoodle on October 2nd, 2018 at 11:53 UTC »
When will the raises for Amazon go in effect?
Target is raising their minimum wage to $15 by 2020. And Walmart is raising theirs to... $11? Wtf?
conker1264 on October 2nd, 2018 at 11:33 UTC »
Wait holy shit really?! We had a meeting last week saying we got a raise for our location by $.60. and today they said we have a random new meeting tomorrow. This must be it! Holy fuck I'm so excited!!!!
Edit: I was making $12.75 before. $.50 was from night diff and the other $.25 was a 6 month raise. So starting pay was $12 for those that are curious.
smalltowngirl332 on October 2nd, 2018 at 10:41 UTC »
As an Amazon warehouse worker this just made my fucking day. I haven't heard any updates on the pay structure at my site yet (I currently make $15.75, which was the top rate for nightshift), but this will help me out so much. THANK YOU Amazon.
EDIT: My pay rate is $15, the extra .75 is the night shift differential.
EDIT 2: I jinxed myself. Basically I found out from my site that I'll be getting a dollar raise, but they are taking away our incentive pay every month and RSU stocks. So basically, those of us who have been there for years aren't going to see any type of pay increase. If anything, we'll be seeing lower pay as we were supposed to have 16% incentive pay for the peak season. I am now pretty livid.