Amazon is establishing a new minimum wage in America REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo
Amazon introduced a $15 minimum wage in 2018, and more large firms are starting to follow suit.
Amazon now plans to bring in 75,000 new workers at a higher wage, making hiring harder for others.
The company has benchmarked a new minimum wage, first in 2018 s low-wage environment and then in the uncertainty of the coronavirus recession.
In early May, as business was ramping back up after a year of pandemic disruption, Miami-area chef Phil Bryant said his efforts to find enough workers to expand had run in to a problem: Amazon.
very hard for people to pay their bills and to get by. what is the should there be a better correlation? in so many years of reporting this, you would think that low unemployment means higher wages. high stock market performance means that otherwise things are ticking in the economy. greater gdp means that economic activity is such that people should be feeling more prosperous. we haven t had a recession in ten years, and, yet, there are some people who feel because of their wage stagnation that something is wrong with this economy that is otherwise healthy looking. the best explanation for what s going on, ali, goes like this. yes, we have growing prosperity, our gdp, so our measure of how much income and revenue and profits in the economy is expanding, that economic pie is growing. but the share of that pie that is going to workers, that is going to labor has been decreasing. it really fell during the great recession, and it just has not
it shows that, first of all, our job here is to legislate. impeachment dominates the news. we can t do much about it. but the everyday challenges people are facing with out of incredibly high health care costs, particularly pharmaceuticals with wage stagnation. with the need to have a modern trade agreement that has labored environmental protections. all of these things we ve been focusing on and we ll see in these last two weeks of the session that we re going to get them across the finish line. the other point is, yes, we have come to this conclusion that the president must be impeached. but it s kind of heartbreaking to make that, but our job is to legislate even when that legislation may be a political victory for president trump. if it s a victory for the american people, that s good for all of us. i notice, i m sure you did as well, that the president claimed a personal victory for the u.s. trade deal. do you not saying, hey, democrats, republicans we joined
again, he s looking for someone to blame. what he s getting, some of this data, he s seeing the writing on the wall. his actions have brought this about. his erratic leadership, his trade war with china, the rattling of the markets. this tax bill that did nothing to really address the fundamental problems in the economy, whether that s wage stagnation or whether that s the investments that mike mentioned that should be made and the research and innovative base of this country. so he s just looking for scapegoats. he s looking for people to blame. for the democrats, it s a simple message. this guy didn t take care of you. he said he was going to look out for you, the people you re always talking about in pennsylvania. instead of looking out for you, he looked out for the wealthiest americans. he looked out for corporations, and meanwhile, you re the one getting hit. your wages aren t going up. and your student loans are still going up. your retirement security is still elusive. the pr