Joe Quinlivan, who leads Amazon’s robotics and logistics technology teams, at the company’s testing and manufacturing facility outside Boston.
Photographer: M. Scott Brauer/BloombergAmazon Is Running Out of Warehouse Workers. Cue the Robots
A new highly automated system featuring a yellow bot called Sparrow can store and retrieve millions of items—tasks currently handled by humans.
Earlier this year, an Amazon.com Inc. recruiter received a message from Seattle: Put help-wanted fliers in high schools, food banks and homeless shelters—anywhere someone might be willing to take an entry-level position at one of the e-commerce giant’s warehouses.
The recruiter thought the command seemed desperate but was painfully aware of how hard it had become to find people willing to work for Amazon. A conversation this person had with a prospective candidate at a job fair in Nevada typified the challenge. Upon learning the starting pay was $18.25 an hour, the man said he couldn’t afford to pay rent on that wage.