Amazon burns through hourly employees, a major New York Times investigation found.
Employee churn is so high that some Amazon execs are reportedly worried about running out of people.
The company has been on a hiring spree to keep up with increased shopping during the pandemic.
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Amazon has been hiring hundreds of thousands of workers for roles in its warehouses, which it calls fulfillment centers, but those employees have been quitting almost as fast as they can be hired, according to a huge report from The New York Times published on Tuesday.
Many of the over 350,000 workers Amazon hired from July to October stayed with the company "just days or weeks," the report said.
Hourly employees had a turnover rate of about 150% every year, data reviewed by The Times indicated. That led some Amazon executives to worry about running out of hirable employees in the US, the report said.
Amazon went on an extended hiring spree in 2020 as it attempted to keep up with a massive spike in demand during coronavirus lockdowns. As Americans increasingly turned to Amazon for things like toiletries and groceries, the company repeatedly touted major hiring pushes.
By May 2021, Amazon was even offering $1,000 signing bonuses to new employees — partially a symptom of hiring issues that employers are facing in a variety of industries, and potentially of Amazon's remarkably high turnover rate.
One former Amazon manager who oversaw human-resources efforts focused on warehouse workers compared the situation with worker churn at Amazon warehouses to the use of fossil fuels. "We keep using them, even though we know we're slowly cooking ourselves," he told The Times.
Amazon representatives didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
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NaturalObligation on June 15th, 2021 at 22:01 UTC »
Amazon goes through so many employees in their warehouses that they literally preemptively hire people and basically put them on hold, well before they even need anyone extra.. In anticipation of people quitting so they can immediately fill in the spots when they do. Just to give you an idea of how they recruit. And I’m talking year-round also, not just seasonally during Christmas for example.
I worked at an Amazon fulfillment center (their big warehouses) for 5 months.. Literally a full month went by from the time my background check passed and they sent me my employment offer email to the time I was actually given the date for my first shift. That’s right, I didn’t actually even get a shift or know I was going to be working until a month after I had my badge photo taken and received my employment offer. I had no idea what was going on, there was zero communication in between. I was in complete limbo.
Fake_William_Shatner on June 15th, 2021 at 20:34 UTC »
In other news the "I worked for Amazon support group" is getting HUGE.
irresponsible_owl on June 15th, 2021 at 19:55 UTC »
This must be why they started the new cloning division. They're running out of people so fast they need to make more!