Catherwood LibraryILR School

Observers are concerned that, despite Amazon receiving praise for raising the minimum wage for its US and UK employees last week, that broader issues surrounding the company will be ignored. While Amazon’s recent wage hike received praise from future presidential candidates such as Bernie Sanders, minimum wage increases in the US have still failed to keep pace with inflation. The Economics Policy Institute estimated that a full-time minimum wage worker in 1968 should have earned $20,600 a year; in 2017, the figure earned by a federal minimum wage worker was $15,080. While the figure that Amazon’s low-wage workers earn will increase, concerns remain that they will still struggle to earn further wage increases in a timely fashion, unless changes are made to the current federal minimum wage. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) cited concerns over Amazon’s broader impact on the economy in at least two areas - the company’s increasing use of automation has resulted in half the employees needed to run brick-and-mortar stores, and the company’s increasing monopolization of the marketplace means that the opportunity for small and medium businesses to succeed has disintegrated.