It is mostly PR.

Among all Amazon workers, the median pay is $28,446 a year ($13.68 an hour), a figure the company revealed this year for the first time because of a new regulatory requirement. That’s a worldwide figure that includes full and part-time workers. Glassdoor, an employment site, says average pay at U.S. fulfillment centers has been $13 an hour, according to nearly 900 people who submitted their data to the site.

Amazon’s pay is significantly above the $10.28 an hour that the typical retail worker makes, but it’s less than the $15.53 that a median warehouse employee is paid, according to Labor Department data.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/amazons-15-m...

Article is from 2018, but is about a wage increase to $15/hr.

Wait, so they're taking a part time pay for a year in which someone didn't work full time and dividing it by full time hours, even though those aren't worked to calculate an hourly salary below the minimum hourly salary that's actually paid?

Yeah, I wondered about the methodology there, but they provide an additional data point.

> It is mostly PR.

>Amazon’s pay is significantly above the $10.28 an hour that the typical retail worker makes, but it’s less than the $15.53 that a median warehouse employee is paid, according to Labor Department data.

It might be tempting to conclude from that amazon is under-paying for that, but it's unknown what the median "warehouse job" at amazon entails compared to the median "warehouse job" elsewhere. If the jobs at amazon is mostly low skill (comparable with retail), then it wouldn't be fair to compare to the median warehouse job that has higher proportion of skilled labor like forklift drivers.

Just anecdotally, the warehouses around here pay $15/hour for unskilled workers who do not drive lifts. In a low cost-of-living Midwestern suburban area.

Only one data point but the local Amazon warehouse I worked at for a while has a Target warehouse about a mile away that pays ~20% more for similar work. People were leaving for them in droves, including management.

I'm sure the competitiveness varies wildly in different areas though.

There's something to be said for poaching workers your competition has trained already.

The downside, especially for the managers, is that they bring their toxic attitudes with them. Diluted of course, but removing it entirely would be a huge effort.

I don't know a lot about warehouse work, and most of it is second hand, but I don't think anyone works as hard as Amazon warehouse workers. Yes, having robots deliver stuff to you is more efficient, but it sounds more like Lucile Ball in the candy factory trying to keep up with the conveyor belt.

Generally the conveyor doesn't go faster when you get faster. The warehouse robots are just working on queuing theory. However fast you go, they'll just schedule more shit to come to you.