U.S.: Amazon doubles the base salary cap for its corporate employees

While the maximum base salary for Amazon’s corporate employees was previously capped at $160,000 a year (€141,000), the company has now decided to more than double this to $350,000 (€308,000). “This past year has seen a particularly competitive labor market and in doing a thorough analysis of various options, weighing the economics of our business and the need to remain competitive for attracting and retaining top talent, we decided to make meaningfully bigger increases to our compensation levels than we do in a typical year,” Amazon said in an internal memo reported in the US press. The United States is clearly being affected by the ‘Big Quit’ phenomenon with some 38 million people resigning their positions in 2021 (out of 162 million jobs), and nearly 11 million positions recorded as vacant. Amazon has not escaped this wave, not least as it has been paying its managers lower salaries than other companies in the sector, albeit partly compensating this via by stock options. The company’s share price trajectory however has been lagging that of its profits, with the US big tech earning $33 billion (€30 billion)in 2021, up 56% over one year. This base pay hike will primarily affect technology centered and managerial staff, with the company having already raised its logistics workers standard hourly pay rate to $18 an hour in September 2021.