Over the last decade alone (2010 to 2020), we’ve committed more than €100 billion to grow Amazon across the EU and the UK. If you take in to account our cumulative investments in Europe plus our overall GDP contribution, the total is estimated to be more than €200 billion on a pan-European basis since 2010*.
Those investments have also established Amazon as a major European employer. We now employ more than 200,000 people in good quality permanent roles across Europe, and that number is much higher when seasonal workers are included. We are incredibly proud of how we have been able to make good jobs available to so many people and, in 2021 alone, we created 65,000 new permanent positions across our European businesses.
For context:
- we employ more people with permanent jobs in the EU and UK than the entire global workforce of two of the top five European car manufacturers1,2;
- our directly employed workforce in the EU and UK is around two-thirds the size of the total European steel industry workforce3; and
- our EU and UK workforce is now almost as large as the total combined global workforce of the German, Austrian, Swiss, Belgian, Irish, Spanish and UK flag carrier airlines prior to the impact of the Covid pandemic4.
We take our role as a large employer very seriously. All of our employees are paid a competitive salary and receive a comprehensive benefits package from day one, including a retirement savings plan and healthcare, medical and life insurance. We also support the creation of a large number of jobs outside of Amazon by providing local companies (many of them small and medium-sized enterprises) with the technologies and tools they need to sell their products to a global customer base. In March 2021, we conducted research among the network of third-party sellers across major EU countries and the UK who sell their products on Amazon. We asked each seller how many people they had employed to support their Amazon-related business activities. Almost 30,000 European businesses participated in the research. Based on their responses, we estimate that more than 550,000 people are currently employed across our EU and UK third-party seller network as a direct consequence of their relationships with Amazon.
The influence we have on job creation and in the communities we serve doesn’t stop there. We’ve also supported the development of indirect work opportunities across our European supply chain. More than 330,000 people now work for companies providing services to Amazon across Europe.
Our workplaces
At Amazon, we provide all kinds of jobs for all kinds of people, from young to old, from those with few skills to people with doctorate-level qualifications. Our workforce ranges from people who are new to the working world who train on the job – including graduates and apprentices – to people with decades of experience. There’s a potential role for everyone in Amazon, from our operations sites, customer service centers and data centers through to our R&D hubs, fashion studios and corporate headquarters.
We’re particularly proud that we’ve created good quality jobs in places where jobs are scarce. Many of our more than 70 Fulfillment Center (FC) facilities are located in regions within EU member states and the UK that have experienced decades of industrial decline and high levels of unemployment. A typical FC site will employ between 1,000 and 2,000 people in permanent roles and even more on a seasonal basis, working with state-of-the-art technology designed to enhance the employee experience and support safer ways of working as well as helping to improve quality and lower prices. These are some of the most advanced workplaces of their kind in the world, and the people who work there receive excellent starting pay and benefits from day one.
New recruits to our logistics centers join us because they see Amazon as a great career opportunity. According to new starters surveyed in the UK in 2021, 91% of new recruits said that career potential was extremely or very important in their decision to join the company, and 88% said they joined because of Amazon’s competitive pay.
The vast majority of our people working for Amazon live in the communities that surround each site, and many of them grew up in those communities. There are strong roots connecting our workforce and our neighbors. Job opportunities with Amazon make a big difference for entire communities where there are limited options for many people to earn a living, let alone to take the first steps in building their careers within an advanced retail and technology business.
Furthermore, every frontline employee is eligible for our Amazon Career Choice program after they’ve worked for us for one year. Career Choice provides employees with free funding for professional training and tuition up to a value of £8,000/€8,000 to gain new skills to support them when pursuing their career at Amazon or elsewhere. The program is particularly focused on high-demand occupations in areas such as manufacturing, healthcare and transportation, and it has benefited more than 50,000 Amazon employees worldwide to date.
Amazon is the gateway into the world of work for many younger people. Our EU and UK workforce as a whole is relatively young. Since 2018, over 13,500 people we’ve recruited have been under the age of 28, and the average age of an Amazon employee in the EU and UK is 35. We also offer great later-life job opportunities for older people: 1.69 percent of employees are over the age of 55, and our oldest employee is 72. And many of the jobs we created during 2021 were in high-skills, high-demand professions; during the year we recruited over 3,500 people into software development, information technology and engineering roles.
We’re proud of the jobs we create and the investments we’ve made in Europe, and we will continue working to find the best ways to invest in the people who work for us and the communities we serve.
*Analysis by Keystone Strategy
References
1. https://www.bmwgroup.com/en/investor-relations/facts-and-figures.html
2. https://www.renaultgroup.com/en/our-company/
3. https://www.eurofer.eu/assets/Uploads/European-Steel-in-Figures-2020.pdf
4. Lufthansa Group (includes Austrian, SWISS, Brussels Airlines, and Eurowings) plus IAG (British Airways, Aer Lingus, Iberia, LEVEL, and Vueling). Lufthansa Group total employees in 2019 and 2020 here https://investor-relations.lufthansagroup.com/en/corporate-facts/key-data/lufthansa-group.html and IAG total employees https://www.iairgroup.com/~/media/Files/I/IAG/annual-reports/iag-annual-reports/en/iag-annual-report-and-accounts-2020.pdf - see p165 for employee numbers in 2019 and 2020. Total Lufthansa Group and IAG employees in 2019 pre-Covid was 210,052, dropping to 167,793 in December 2020.
