Amazon: The future of jobs?

 

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New York Times, 4/12/2021

But it’s also worth thinking about Amazon jobs in a broader context, one that includes not just the available alternatives today but also the history of Bessemer and many other struggling cities and towns around the U.S. Compared with many of the jobs that were once available — factory jobs and others that allowed workers to rise up the economic ladder — Amazon jobs don’t look so appealing. Fifteen dollars an hour for a full-time worker translates to about $31,000 a year, less than half of U.S. median family income and low enough in many cases for a family to qualify for subsidized school lunches. [emphasis added]

That is not the kind of pay that seems likely to help the country again build a growing, thriving middle class

What Amazon jobs have in common with industrial jobs of the past:

1. Main option for high school and community college graduates without specific jobs skills
2. Physically demanding and dangerous

Differences

1. Work alone, with robots, not with a team of employees
2. Pay is less (compared, for example, to $35 an hour -- the quivalent of $52 today -- at a Baltimore steel mill in 2002)