Amazon may face a shortage of employees in 2024, with a 150% employee turnover rate

According to a leaked internal Amazon memo, the e-commerce giant is worried that it may face a situation where no one is available in the future.

First reported by Recode: "If it continues on its current path, Amazon will 'exhaust' the U.S. labor market by 2024."

Amazon is right to be concerned — its employee turnover rate is almost astronomical. Before the pandemic, Amazon was losing about 3% of its employees every week, or 150% per year.

In comparison, the average annual employee turnover rate in transportation, warehousing and utilities in 2021 was 49%, and in the retail industry it was 64.6%, less than half of Amazon's.

Even Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who initially welcomed the high turnover because he believed long-term employees would slack off, is concerned.

But in his final letter to shareholders last year, Bezos said the company must do more for its employees. He wrote that Amazon was committed to being "the world's best employer and the safest place to work on Earth."

To some extent, Bezos' change of attitude is the result of the union's efforts.

Workers and labor groups have long decried Amazon's working conditions and high employee turnover amid high rates of workplace injuries.

Matt Littrell , 22, has been working as a picker at an Amazon warehouse in Campbellsville, Kentucky, since early 2021 .

He is reportedly trying to organize a union at the warehouse and says Amazon's hiring practices, productivity quotas, attendance policies and unequal rules are responsible for the company's high employee turnover.

He said one of the issues was Amazon's "break time" metric, which monitors employee productivity and publishes records, and could lead to dismissal if too many "break times" were accumulated.

He also said areas where goods are stored are often overloaded, which can easily lead to employee injuries and make it more difficult to find goods - making it more difficult to meet productivity quotas.

Zaki Kadura, a worker at the Staten Island, New York, warehouse and a member of Amazon's union, said productivity quotas are a major factor in Amazon's high employee turnover.

He also cited the heavy items workers need to handle, severely overloaded stacking areas and Amazon's lack of accommodation as reasons for employee turnover.

“Imagine working 10 hours a day and having people pressuring you to hit those targets,” Caddourla said. “I think these quotas should be recommendations, not mandatory.”

An April report by the Center for Strategic Organizing based on Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) data found that Amazon's serious injury rate in 2021 was 6.8 per 100 workers , more than double the warehousing industry average of 3.3 per 100 workers and an increase of 20% from the previous year.

With unemployment near a 50-year low, Amazon is struggling to fill its job openings.

An Amazon spokesperson said: "This memo is a draft document intended to validate the company's assumptions and test various scenarios. It does not represent actual conditions, and we are continuing to recruit employees in Phoenix, California, and across the country."

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