Amazon Is Hiring Fewer Workers This Holiday Season, a Sign That Robots Are Replacing Them

Amazon is hiring around 100,000 additional employees this holiday season, which is fewer than the company added in either the 2016 or 2017 holiday seasons, when it brought in 120,000 additional workers. 'Citi analyst Mark May says he thinks the reduction in seasonal hiring is strong evidence that Amazon is succeeding with plans to automate operations in its warehouses,' reports Quartz. From the report: 'We've seen an acceleration in the use of robots within their fulfillment centers, and that has corresponded with fewer and fewer workers that they're hiring around the holidays,' May told CNBC. He added that 2018 is the 'first time on record' Amazon plans to hire fewer holiday workers than it did the previous year. 'Since the last holiday season, we've focused on more ongoing full-time hiring in our fulfillment centers and other facilities,' Amazon spokesperson Ashley Robinson said in an email, adding that the company has 'created over 130,000 jobs' in the last year. 'We are proud to have created over 130,000 new jobs in the last year alone.'

Amazon bought robotics company Kiva Systems for $775 million in 2012, and began using its orange robots in warehouses in late 2014. By mid-2016, it had become clear just how big a difference those robots were making. The little orange guys could handle in 15 minutes the sorting, picking, packing, and shipping that used to take human workers an hour or more to complete. In June 2016, Deutsche Bank predicted Kiva automation could save Amazon nearly $2.5 billion (those savings dropped to $880 million after accounting for the costs of installing robots in every warehouse).

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