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Amazon has announced that it will create 100,000 new full-time jobs in the U.S. over the next 18 months, mostly in warehouses (fulfillment centers) and call centers. Many of the jobs will be added in Texas, California, Florida, New Jersey, among other states:
Amazon has quickly ramped up its workforce over the last few years, as it pushes to open up more fulfillment centers to get packages out to its customers more quickly. In 2011, Amazon had 30,000 full-time employees in the U.S. At the end of last year, it employed 180,000 people. [...] Amazon has seen "tremendous" demand for their retail service as well as a fast-growing cloud business, says Edward Jones analyst Josh Olson on why Amazon is hungry for more workers. Amazon is increasingly emphasizing convenience of its retail service, such as Same-Day Delivery options, as its edge on pricing dulls with the introduction of state sales taxes.
President-elect Trump's incoming press secretary Sean Spicer helped his boss to take credit for the news:
"The president-elect met with heads of several of the tech companies and urged them to keep their jobs and production inside the United States," spokesman Sean Spicer said in his opening remarks in a press call on Thursday.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday January 13 2017, @01:35PM
What, you mean like 90% of the jobs in Obama's "recovery"?
If you want middle-class jobs, create them. SMBs are what make this nation thrive financially. They always have been and always will be. But go ahead, keep teaching your kids that going to college and slapping a white collar around their neck leads to something besides wage slavery. Just means that those of us with guts and ambition will be that much better off.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by BenJeremy on Friday January 13 2017, @01:48PM
No doubt, a lot of jobs from the "recovery" are absolutely crap jobs. Corporations have been shipping high tech jobs out or shifting high tech jobs to contract houses for the past 2 decades.
Obama's administration might have made announcements, but they hardly made the fuss that Trump is about it. A lot of the stuff he's taking credit for (Softbank deal, for example) have been in the works long before Trump was elected and without a single word of input from Trump or his advisers.
My main point is that this sort of thing will accelerate under a "business-friendly" administration. The pattern has been set for quite a while and the leash is about to be taken off; I can't see this as having a positive effect on America's working or middle classes.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday January 13 2017, @02:03PM
Kind of my point. The middle class is largely not created by corporations. Nor is it destroyed by them though. Large corporations are not what anyone should ever have relied upon for jobs because it has never been in their interest to create good jobs. It would in fact be exceedingly foolish for them to set out to create good jobs.
SMBs create good jobs. They have to because they can't afford to automate every little thing and because some jobs are exceedingly difficult or impossible to automate. Unfortunately, the last President who actually got this and did anything about it was elected thirty-six years ago.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by BenJeremy on Friday January 13 2017, @03:01PM
My family was middle class, my Dad worked in the auto shops until he retired. Henry Ford helped launch the middle class, which is not the same as the merchant class (SMB owners). Small businesses are not typically places where you get healthy wages or benefits (indeed, many are family-run). Mid- to Large-sized businesses employ the middle class population.
Reagan, like his predecessor, Carter, was naive (just in wildly different ways) - "trickle down" only works when business leaders are willing to let something actually trickle down. The period following Reagan's presidency might have been far worse, economically (and was bad under Bush1) had it not been for the internet and the emergence of a new pool of "resources" (in this case, not oil or gold, but digital innovation, as corny as that sounds) to stimulate the economy. The flood of positive economic fortunes makes it hard to judge the Clinton era one way or another.
So I would argue that big corporations have gone a LONG way to destroy the middle class. I've seen it... the Big Three have shut down lots of plants employing middle class workers, and in the few cases where the plant's work has been shifted to a second or even third tier vendor, the jobs that returned were minimum wage jobs with bare benefits.
Reagan's naivety (keeping in mind I voted for the guy) failed to account for the fact that given enough slack, many (if not most) corporate boards will do exactly the worse thing for the US and for its people if there is any sort of profit to be had. This has a collective effect on the national and even global economy. Worse, big businesses have grown and pushed out all of your small to medium businesses when they could; they are no longer effective in their own right.
Somewhere, we need proper balance, because time and time again, without checks in place, big business will always tilt the wrong way in the worst way.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday January 13 2017, @04:11PM
Small businesses are owned by the middle class and also employ the middle class in skilled trades. Mid-sized businesses employ the middle class. Large businesses have never employed the majority of the middle class in our entire national history. Why people keep looking to them for salvation one moment and cursing them the next is entirely beyond me.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by deimtee on Saturday January 14 2017, @01:13AM
The term middle-class is suffering from a drift in meaning.
Way back it meant significantly above the working class, generally professionals - doctors, lawyers, architects, SMB owners, etc. They would have significant assets, and probably be socially known to the local level upper class.
That was when one reasonable working class job could support a family.
A middle-class family might not be driving a Rolls each, but they weren't slumming it in an old pick-up either.
Now, middle class has been devalued to basically anyone who can support themselves (and family) working only one job per adult.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 14 2017, @01:49AM
I dunno about you but I still don't consider someone middle class unless they can support a household on one income and have disposable income enough to put some back. They don't necessarily have to be doing so but they should be able to if necessary.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by driven on Friday January 13 2017, @01:57PM
You heard it here first, folks: people in wage-slaving white collar jobs have no guts or ambition. That's quite an ignorant claim, dude.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday January 13 2017, @02:07PM
Nice rebuttal. Full of facts and references. Argue your position or begone.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 13 2017, @07:01PM
There is a limited market for SMB services, and you can't compete with large corporate structures where they have driven their costs lower. How about you prove your opinion before requiring facts and references? Begone you carrion eater.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday January 13 2017, @07:36PM
While I do agree with your point, it escapes the brutal reality of corruption and protectionism granted to large entrenched corporations.
I love your thought there, but it was disastrous trade agreements and outsourcing of *everything* that made it so that SMBs simply could not compete with Wallmart. Whether its loss leading, or toxic crap from China replacing anything Made In The USA, it's simply not possible to compete under a playing field that is anything but fair.
In order to bring back SMBs we need to support and encourage them. For instance, how about NOT giving Nestle a fucking billion dollar tax break? How about, as We the People, we DO NOT give them access to our forests for $500 to rape them and sell us back water at insane prices?
Basically, roll back the protectionism and corruption bought for years in government that allowed these corporations to form in the first place. As somebody who STRONGLY speaks with his wallet all the time, it's getting harder and harder to give my money to local SMBs to fight the Wallmarts.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 14 2017, @12:24AM
I have nothing to add to that. Well said.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday January 13 2017, @03:12PM
Looking at the largest industries for SMBs, you have stuff like retail stores, motels, restaurants, transportation (e.g. trucking), construction, apartment rentals, waste management, agriculture, and home services. Only about 1 in 5 SMBs is selling what would generally be considered white-collar services, like dentistry, financial planning, software development, or architecture. And because SMBs are, well, small, they don't tend to have an in-house infrastructure of lawyers and accountants and IT and marketing and so forth. Which means, just based on who they need to hire, SMBs don't really create that many middle-class jobs.
What created the great post-war American middle class was not SMBs, but large businesses combined with enough union contracts that even non-unionized shops had to offer gigs as good as a union shop or risk being unionized.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday January 13 2017, @04:05PM
Lawyers' offices, doctors' offices, plumbing crews, accounting firms, electrician crews, car lots, furniture stores, dentists' offices, auto mechanics, independent hospitals, body shops, health clubs, banks, small time ISPs, and pretty much every business that needs management. The list goes on but I think you get my point. Unless you were absolutely unskilled at everything, you had no need to go to the big corporations for middle class work until SMBs growth went straight into the shitter.
Stop looking for a handout from large businesses. They do not exist for your benefit and only fools ever thought they did.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 13 2017, @04:43PM
The list goes on but I think you get my point.
Your point seems to be that you have a profoundly weak sense of scale.
Every single one of those businesses typically employee a a couple of dozen people at the most.
There is simply not enough work in those industries to support the level of employment you fantasize about.
As a misanthrope the hardest thing for you to do is to realize that humanity's single greatest strength is its ability to build large-scale social structures. You suck at that, so you think its a weakness. Its really just your weakness.
cue literalism snark harnessed for denial
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 14 2017, @12:35AM
You're absolutely correct. Up to a couple dozen middle class jobs each. In every town worth speaking of across the entire nation. Now multiply that by ten or so because I simply couldn't be arsed to list off all of the SMBs that employ middle class workers. Now multiply it again to deal with the size of your town vs. how many can be served per location. Now multiply it again to cover competition within your town. Now realize you were horribly wrong and STFU.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 13 2017, @07:04PM
Cause he's a... BOOTSTRAP HEROOOO
GOT PROFIT IN HIS EYEEEES!
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Friday January 13 2017, @06:40PM
Right, but they do need accountants, lawyers, IT and so forth. Many people make more than a decent living servicing SMBs. Yeah, one doesn’t get medical/dental or other benefits as a contractor, but one pretty much sets the price of the service and the variety of businesses make it more interesting than the boring same ol’, same ol’ every day.
Some of my clients are large (300+ employees), some a really small, like 5 people, some are government entities. Each one has a different price-point and different needs and resources; I find it very challenging and fun to come up with solutions that fit their budgets/expectations.
I’ll grant you that at a large enterprise you might get career advancement and a much better position, but the days of the ‘company man’ are gone; chances of getting downsized or outsourced need to be weighted against the chance of advancement.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday January 13 2017, @07:44PM
That puts you in the roughly 20% of SMBs that are professional services. My point is that most of the others are not creating middle-class jobs, they're creating low-wage jobs, just like the megacorps mostly create low-wage jobs.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 13 2017, @07:08PM
Woah woah woah, you support unions? That's filthy commie stuff, or so some amazing business leaders told me, and they're rich so they must know what they're talking about!! /S
While I have seen firsthand some of the pitfalls of unions, I will gladly take those over the wages and working conditions that most businesses seem to promote. "Work harder for less you lazy bum!!" Seriously folks, decent working conditions and pay are only ever brought about by the workers themselves; or in a few great companies who actually value their employees.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 13 2017, @09:02PM
Recent news in the race-to-the-bottom: [csmonitor.com]
[1] The Repugnitans, having gained a majority there[2] days before, really REALLY wanted to sneak this anti-worker measure through.
[2] I truly don't understand workers voting against their own interests.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Friday January 13 2017, @07:19PM
What, you mean like 90% of the jobs in Obama's "recovery"?
U.S. Payrolls Rise 156,000 as Wages Increase Most Since 2009 [bloomberg.com]
But hey, don't let reality stand in the way of your scare-quotes.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Kromagv0 on Friday January 13 2017, @07:35PM
Wages Increase Most Since 2009
I wouldn't be proud of that number as most people remember the disaster the last part of '08 and '09 was. Pick a year before the giant financial turd.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 13 2017, @11:07PM
1931.
Your move.