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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28314 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024

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American unemployment is at something like 4%

Only due to the way we collect these statistics, which is suspect at best in order to make the party in power look good. Working Amazon or gig economy is often considered "employed", but it's not really living, either. Might as well be a slave.

Might as well be a slave.

But not really.

Pay by role Some Amazon warehouse worker roles and their hourly pay include:

Warehouse associate: $21.22 per hour

Packer: $17.92 per hour

Store shopper: $17.80 per hour

Order picker: $18.65 per hour

Handler: $16.88 per hour

Fulfillment associate: $20.28 per hour

Package handler: $17.46 per hour

So not quite slaves. I won't bother looking up gig worker pay, but similarly find the comparison to slaves (which the US famously had for real) to be silly.

Amazon very recently (as in will take effect on the next check) raised wages for frontline staff across all of CS and Fulfillment https://fortune.com/2024/09/18/amazon-pay-raise-hourly-warehouse-workers-22-average-wage/

yes there are other measures of unemployment, no they don't show a crisis of unemployment

Gig economy

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/12/08/the-state-of-gig-work-in-2021/

4% are currently doing these types of jobs, while an additional 5% are not currently doing this but have done so in the past year. In total, 9% of U.S. adults are current or recent gig workers, meaning they have earned money through an online gig platform in the past 12 months.

I don't consider this to hugely move the needle.

Working Amazon

There's always been jobs that people look down on but still need doing.

I wish you would at least have read the parenthetical intended to head off criticisms of this type and engaged more substantively rather than gesturing at two things you don't like.

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