Amazon's Ambitious Plan to Replace Half a Million Jobs with Robots

Amazon, the nation's second-largest employer, is on the cusp of a significant shift in the American workplace, with executives expecting to replace more than half a million jobs with robots. The company has already hired hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers, but now it aims to automate many of these positions, saving about 30 cents on each item that Amazon picks, packs, and delivers to customers. Amazon's automation team believes the company can avoid hiring over 160,000 people in the United States by 2027, even as it expects to sell twice as many products by 2033.

Key Takeaways:

• Amazon's U.S. work force has more than tripled since 2018 to almost 1.2 million.
• The company's automation team expects to avoid hiring over 160,000 people in the United States by 2027, saving about 30 cents on each item that Amazon picks, packs, and delivers to customers.
• Amazon is developing plans to mitigate the fallout in communities that may lose jobs, including building an image as a "good corporate citizen" through greater participation in community events.
• The company is focusing on transforming large, workhorse warehouses that pick and pack products into automated facilities, with a goal of automating 75 percent of its operations.
• Amazon has already developed an orchestrated system of robotic programs that plug into each other like Legos, with a focus on creating warehouses that employ few humans at all.
• The company plans to copy the design of its most advanced warehouse, a facility in Shreveport, La., in about 40 facilities by the end of 2027.
• Amazon's plans could have a profound impact on blue-collar jobs throughout the country and serve as a model for other companies like Walmart, the nation's largest private employer, and UPS.
• A professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Daron Acemoglu, who studies automation and won the Nobel Prize in economic science last year, said that Amazon's plans could lead to the company becoming a net job destroyer, not a net job creator.

Statistics:

• 1.2 million: Amazon's U.S. work force (as of 2022)
• 160,000: Number of people Amazon's automation team expects to avoid hiring in the United States by 2027
• 30 cents: Savings on each item that Amazon picks, packs, and delivers to customers by automating processes
• 75 percent: Amazon's goal for automating its operations
• 40: Number of facilities that Amazon plans to replicate the design of its most advanced warehouse in by the end of 2027
• 1,200: Number of employees that Amazon's Stone Mountain facility may need fewer employees after the retrofit is completed
• 10 percent: Increase in the number of items that Amazon's Stone Mountain facility is expected to process after the retrofit is completed
• 5,000: Number of people who have gone through Amazon's mechatronics apprenticeship program since 2019

Sources:

• "Amazon's Ambitious Plan to Replace Half a Million Jobs with Robots" by Karen Weise and Emily Kask, The New York Times, [No date listed]
• Interviews with Udit Madan, Jeff Bezos, Andy Jassy, and Justin Post
• Internal strategy documents viewed by The New York Times