Amazon Invests Bigtime in Its Current Workforce

Amazon is one of the large corporations impacted by the current competitive labor market. With the US unemployment rate at a 50 year low it has become challenging to attract and retain the right candidates for roles across all skill levels. This means employers must either loosen their hiring criteria in regard to education, drug testing and criminal records or look to their existing workforce as a major sitting resource.

$700m in Retraining Investment

And that indeed is what Amazon intends to do!  An investment of $700m in retraining efforts aimed at about 1/3 of its American workforce is underway. The goal it’s claimed is to capitalize on technology to handle routine roles while allowing workers to upskill and move up the ladder, for example training floor workers as IT technicians.  This is truly experimental though. Government attempts to turn manufacturing roles into computer roles have been largely unsuccessful and attempts to do the same in the corporate world have been few.  It remains to be seen how well the investment plays out in a more challenged economy.

Although there have been concerns about the replacement of human labor by automation, the evidence does not point to major displacement. Large companies such as Amazon have hired thousands of warehouse workers, and jobs in the manufacturing industry continue to grow after years of cuts.

Read the full article  By Ben Casselman and Adam Satariano published July 11th by the New York Times