Amazon aiming to replace over 600,000 workers with robots: report

The mass job reduction would save the company about 30 cents on each product it processes and ships to customers

Amazon is planning to replace hundreds of thousands of jobs with robot workers, according to The New York Times.

Citing internal documents and interviews with sources, the publication reports that Amazon is hoping to have robots replace more than 600,000 U.S. jobs it would otherwise have to fill by 2033. The NYT notes that this would work out to savings of about 30 cents on each item that Amazon picks, packs and delivers to customers.

On top of that, Amazon is reportedly aiming to eventually automate 75 percent of its operations. These automation plans would supposedly save Amazon as much as US$12.6 billion (about C$17.6 billion) between 2025 and 2027. As the NYT notes, this comes amid Amazon’s aggressive cost-cutting plans that were initiated in 2021 by Andy Jassy once he took over as CEO from Jeff Bezos.

Of course, Amazon knows such automation plans would be met with great controversy, especially as the cost of living rises across the board. To that point, the NYT reports that Amazon is actually considering ways to bolster its image as a “good corporate citizen” in response to the inevitable backlash. This includes increased participation in charitable community projects and using vague terms like “advanced technology” and “cobot” (to suggest that robots are working alongside humans instead of replacing them).

When reached for comment by the NYT, the company claimed these leaked documents were incomplete and don’t represent its broader hiring strategy. The spokesperson added that the company is set to hire 250,000 people this holiday season alone, although they didn’t confirm how many of these positions would be permanent vs. seasonal.

All in all, this is a pretty concerning report, validating long-running fears of automation replacing jobs en masse. And while this is only the U.S. for now, it’s easy to see how it could extend to other countries, like Canada, either directly from Amazon or indirectly through influencing other companies. Here at home, we’ve already seen Amazon cease operations in Quebec after warehouse workers unionized.

One expert that The New York Times spoke to in its feature summed this all up rather well. “Once they work out how to do this profitably, it will spread to others, too,” said MIT professor and Nobel Prize winner Daron Acemoglu. As he tells it, Amazon would become a “net job destroyer” should these plans come to fruition.

Source: The New York Times

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