Is Amazon in trouble?

The e-commerce giant could run out of workers to hire in US warehouses by 2024, according to leaked internal research from mid-2021 recently obtained by Recode.

😳 Whoa… Yeah. The report calculated Amazon’s available pool of workers based on stats like income levels and household proximity to existing or planned facilities.

• Amazon currently employs ~700,000 workers in warehouses and Whole Foods stores across America, making it the third largest US employer behind Walmart and McDonald’s.
• It churned through the equivalent of 123% of its entire workforce in 2019… and 159% in 2020, a rate about three times industry average. In other words: Amazon is more than rehiring its entire workforce each year.

📦 Cause for concern: Execs say the method used to create the report was 94% accurate at predicting understaffed locations ahead of Prime Day 2021.

🤔 So, what’s next?… Per the report, Amazon had six levers it could use to delay the labor crisis by a few years, including raising wages and increasing automation, but “only a series of sweeping changes to how the company does business and manages its employees will significantly alter the timeline,” per Recode.

📸 The big picture: Since early April, Amazon’s stock has dipped by more than ⅓, wiping out $600+ billion in market cap. Following an early pandemic growth spurt, CEO Andy Jassy has spent much of his first year reversing e-commerce growth initiatives started under Jeff Bezos.