Amazon surpassed 153,000 full- and part-time employees in California in the fourth quarter of 2020, rapidly outpacing the more than 80,000 Amazon employees in the company's home state of Washington, the latest numbers from the company show.
Driving the trend: While Amazon has tech, engineering and product development operations in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles, the surge coincides with the build-out of its distribution network, Prime Now Hubs, Amazon Pantry and Fresh facilities, and physical retail stores. California is also one of the first states where Amazon is opening last-mile delivery stations in rural areas.
<p><img alt="" src="https://cdn.geekwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Nkvu9-amazon-s-u-s-employment-by-state-as-of-q4-2020-630x509.png"></p><p><strong>Larger implications: </strong>In this new phase of growth, the company's employment promises to more closely mirror population patterns, beyond tech and engineering hubs. With 40 million residents, California is the nation's most populous state. The trends also show the magnitude of Amazon's growth beyond the Seattle region.<br></p><ul class="ee-ul"><li>The updated total in California represents an increase of nearly 70% from the 91,000 employees reported by Amazon in the state earlier in 2020. The surge makes California the company's largest state for employment by far.</li><li>Washington state, home to the company's Seattle headquarters, had been its largest state for employment prior to 2020. Amazon's latest total of more than 80,000 employees in Washington state is up 8% from 74,000 earlier in 2020.</li><li>In Virginia, where Amazon has <a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2021/amazon-unveils-design-plans-virginia-hq2-dramatic-spiral-helix-building-centerpiece/" target="_blank">established its second headquarters</a>, or HQ2, the company employed more than 27,000 people as of the fourth quarter, up 46% from more than 18,500 employees earlier in the year.</li></ul><p><img alt="" src="https://cdn.geekwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/amazon-employment.png"></p><p><strong>Data source: </strong>The numbers come from <a href="https://www.aboutamazon.com/investing-in-the-u-s" target="_blank">an Amazon page</a> that documents the company's economic impact across the country. The company updated the numbers along with its fourth-quarter earnings release. The numbers reflect direct Amazon employment, not contractors or workers employed through third-party firms or agencies. GeekWire <a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2016/the-united-states-of-amazon/" target="_blank">has been tracking data from the page for five years</a>, and we filled in the gaps using <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20201028205348/https://www.aboutamazon.com/investing-in-the-u-s" target="_blank">snapshots captured by the Internet Archive</a>.</p><p><strong>Reality check:</strong> Amazon is growing so rapidly that its official numbers are often quickly out of date. (The company puts a "+" sign by each employment number in recognition of this fact.) By Amazon's official count, for example, it has 25 fulfillment and sortation centers and 19 delivery stations in California, which would be the most in the nation. However, <a href="https://www.mwpvl.com/html/amazon_com.html" target="_blank">data maintained by logistics consultancy MWPVL International</a> shows more than 30 Amazon fulfillment and sortation centers in California, and as many as 60 delivery stations in the state.</p><p><img alt="" src="https://cdn.geekwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/amzn-employment.png"></p><p><strong>Global context:</strong> Amazon<a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2021/amazon-now-employs-nearly-1-3-million-people-worldwide-adding-500000-workers-2020/" target="_blank"> employed nearly 1.3 million people worldwide</a> as of the end of 2020, growing by 500,000 people in one year. The numbers do not include seasonal workers. About 950,000 of those were in the United States, according to Amazon's economic impact map. By comparison, Walmart has about 2.2 million employees globally, 1.5 million of them in the U.S.</p><p><em>This story <a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2021/california-eclipses-washington-amazons-biggest-state-jobs-153k-employees-counting/" target="_blank">first appeared on GeekWire</a>.</em></p>
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California has seen a major surge in unemployment insurance claims and is bracing for a continued spike as a result of the global spread of COVID-19, which has forced a statewide shelter-in-place order for the Golden State's nearly 40 million residents, state officials said.
As of Thursday, California's Unemployment Development Dept. reported "a huge spike in the number of claims coming in from impacted Californians" with the 58,208 claims processed in the week prior, from Sunday March 8 through Saturday March 14, up from 43,385 claims the week prior, according to EDD spokesman Barry C. White. Those numbers dwarf the roughly 41,000 claims that have the recent average over the last few months.
<p>The numbers do not reflect the number of applications received by unemployed workers in any given week, just those who submit claims, so the numbers may not accurately reflect the totality of the numbers of workers who have lost their jobs. The data also doesn't take into account workers who have had their hours reduced but are not qualified for unemployment insurance. </p><p>"The EDD is applying a variety of strategies to direct as many staff resources as possible to keep up with the increased claim load," White said.</p><p><a href="https://dot.la/coronavirus-recession-ucla-prediction-2645502115.html" target="_self">University of California, Los Angeles economists recently predicted Monday that the U.S. has entered a recession</a> as a result of an end-to-end disruption in global supply chains that have shocked both the supply and demand side of markets. The U.S. recession is expected to last through September, with California's downturn expected to be more severe due to its larger reliance on tourism and trans-Pacific transportation.</p><p>California's specific employment is expected to contract by 0.7% in 2020 with the second and third quarters contracting at the annual rate of 2.6%. The unemployment rate is expected to rise to 6.3% by the end of 2020 and is expected to increase into 2021 at an average of 6.6%. By first quarter 2021, California is expected to lose more than 280,000 payroll jobs with more than one-third in leisure, hospitality, transportation and warehousing.</p><p>Peter Pham, co-founder of Science Inc. in Santa Monica, said the economic ramifications of the novel coronavirus are going to be "profound."</p><p><span></span>"Next week, I think you're gonna see massive layoffs like 20,000, 30,000 people at one company," he told dot.LA on Thursday. "You're going to see furloughs of people...You're going to see a reduction in hours for hourly workers that puts them in a really weird position where they can't file for unemployment. But it saves the company on tax issues.</p><p>"There will be a lot of corporate manipulation unfortunately around what's going to happen. We're just seeing the beginning of the economic collapse that we're going to see. It's going to be bad," Pham said.</p><p>Blind, an anonymous professional network <a href="https://dot.la/coronavirus-tech-professionals-survey-2645481997.html" target="_self">has been leveraging its 3.2 million users — all verified via their work emails — to ask questions</a> about job security, income issues, and working from home, amid the spread of COVID-19.</p><p>Blind's users primarily occupy the tech space, with 60,000 of its employees at Amazon, others on the platform work in finance and telecom.</p><p>In its newest survey, Blind found that among 3,000 respondents, more than 57% feared being laid off. That fear broke down to nearly 88% of employees at Expedia, nearly 38% at Facebook, more than 46% at Amazon, and more than 45% at Apple.<br/></p><p>Meanwhile, nearly 25% of those surveyed have found new ways to supplement their income, including nearly 53% of eBay employees, nearly 20% of Amazon employees, more than 20% of those at Google, and more than 37% of those at Apple.</p><p>A good portion of employees — more than 40% — remain relatively optimistic that life will go "back to normal" in six months to a year. Three percent of employees think it will take 1-3 months while nearly 14% believe it will take more than a year.</p><p>The survey opened on Thursday and the company plans to keep it open throughout the weekend.</p><p><em>_</em><em>_</em></p><p><em>Do you have a story that needs to be told? My DMs are open on Twitter </em><a href="https://twitter.com/latams" target="_blank"><em>@latams</em></a><em>. You can also email me at </em><em>tami(at)dot.la</em><em>, or ask for my Signal.</em></p>
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