Amazon could run out of workers in US in two years, internal memo suggests

theguardian.com:

Is Amazon about to run out of workers? According to a leaked internal memo, the retail logistics company fears so.

“If we continue business as usual, Amazon will deplete the available labor supply in the US network by 2024,” the research, first reported by Recode, stated.

Amazon is right to be worried – its staff turnover rate is astronomic. Before the pandemic, Amazon was losingabout 3% of its workforce weekly, or 150% annually. By contrast the annual average turnover in transportation, warehousing and utilities was 49% in 2021 and in retail it was 64.6%, less than half of Amazon’s turnover.

Even Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, is worried. Bezos originally welcomed high turnover, fearing long-term employees would slack off and cause a “march to mediocrity”. But in his final letter to shareholders as CEO last year, Bezos said the company had to “do a better job” for its employees. Amazon will commit to being “Earth’s Best Employer and Earth’s Safest Place to Work”, he wrote.

In part Bezos’s change of heart is down to a wave of unionization efforts at the company’s warehouses. But Amazon also faces a problem of scale. As the US’s second largest private employer, it is now struggling to replace all the workers it loses.

Workers and labor groups have long decried Amazon’s working conditions and high employee turnover amid high injury rates.

Matt Littrell, 22, a picker at Amazon in Campbellsville, Kentucky, since early 2021 who is trying to organize a union at the warehouse, said Amazon’s hiring practices, productivity quotas, attendance policies and unequal enforcement of rules are contributors to the lack of job security that drives Amazon’s high turnover.

One issue is Amazon’s “time off task” metric, he said, where Amazon monitors