Amazon Will Spend $700M To Retrain Third Of Its Workforce

In the face of the tightest labor market in decades and persistent criticism over working conditions for its low-wage workers, Amazon has announced a plan to retrain a third of its U.S. workforce by 2025, at a cost of about $700 million. The programs will help workers “move into highly skilled technical and non- technical roles,” the company said, and most of the training will be free. Components include an “Amazon Technical Academy” to train software engineers; “Associate2Tech,” a program to train fulfillment center employees for more technically complex jobs; and Amazon Career Choice, also apparently geared to fulfillment center employees, those who want to move into high-demand occupations. The projected programs amount to what’s said to be one of the largest and most expensive corporate retraining programs ever implemented, although as a percentage of revenue that’s likely not the case. Amazon’s annual revenue for 2018 was more than $232 billion.