Amazon workers say they struggle to pay for food and rent

(Bloomberg) — Five years after Amazon.com Inc. raised wages to $15 an hour, half of warehouse workers surveyed by researchers say they struggle to buy enough food or a place to live.

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The national study, published Wednesday by the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago, asked U.S. employees about their economic well-being, including whether they had skipped meals, gone hungry or worried about being able to pay. rents or mortgages.

Fifty-three percent of respondents reported experiencing one or more forms of food insecurity in the previous three months, and 48% experienced one or more forms of housing insecurity. Workers who said they took unpaid time off after being injured on the job were more likely to report problems paying their bills, researchers found.

“It’s not necessarily that Amazon is an exception,” said Sanjay Pinto, co-author of the study with Beth Gutelius. Still, “they are certainly not taking the lead in creating family-sustaining jobs.”

Amazon did not immediately comment on the content of the survey’s findings, but cited the company’s criticism of a recent Oxfam report on workplace surveillance that was based on the same research. The survey failed to prove that respondents actually worked for Amazon, the company said, and its length likely meant only people with “extremely negative experiences” had time to respond, among other criticisms.

Amazon has long been criticized for its treatment of employees, especially those who pack and ship boxes in its warehouses. Much of the criticism centered on injuries that exceeded the rate of logistics industry peers. Amazon has committed to making its warehouses safer, in part by automating aspects of work that require repetitive movements. Pinto and Gutelius examined injuries among Amazon workers in a report published in October, before focusing on workers’ economic circumstances.

The Seattle-based company is the second-largest private-sector employer in the U.S., behind Walmart Inc. Amazon represents about 29% of the U.S. warehouse industry’s workforce, researchers estimate. As such, the company plays a leading role in setting wages and working conditions in a sector transformed by e-commerce.

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The 98-question online survey sought out Amazon employees through social media advertising, targeting warehouses and neighborhoods that house company facilities. The researchers also performed quality checks to eliminate responses from people who appeared to be giving inauthentic responses.

A total of 1,484 workers in 42 states provided enough information to be included in the results. For the portions dealing with economic security, the sample size varied between 1,306 and 1,472 respondents. The margin of error was plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. The work was funded by the Ford Foundation, Oxfam America and the pro-labor nonprofit National Employment Law Project.

One-third of respondents reported using government-funded programs – primarily food stamps or Medicaid – in the past three months. This reflects a 2020 analysis by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which found that Amazon was among the largest employers of people receiving food assistance in nine states that reported the data.

The average Amazon employee in the U.S. will earn $45,613 in 2023, up from $41,762 the previous year, the company said in a filing last month. The company says warehouse and transportation employees earn, on average, more than $20.50 per hour. The survey, conducted between April and August 2023, excluded managers and scaled back a bit: Most respondents reported salaries of $16 to $20 per hour.

About 65% of workers who come to Amazon earn more than they did at their previous employer, research shows. And the same percentage of workers report receiving a raise while working at the company. Rising through the ranks of Amazon’s assembly line, like warehouses, is a tougher proposition: Just 13% of workers reported receiving a promotion during their time at the company, survey data showed.

Respondents who joined Amazon from another company were more likely to have previously worked in food preparation and services, sales, and manufacturing.

“The Amazon story is a sad story of American workers’ declining expectations of their employer,” said study co-author Gutelius, a longtime logistics and warehouse labor researcher.

–With assistance from Spencer Soper.

(Updated with comments from Amazon on survey methodology in fifth paragraph.)

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