- Amazon on Tuesday announced plans to raise the company’s minimum wage in the US to $15 – more than twice the federal minimum wage of $7.25.
- The minimum-wage increase is pennies, however, compared with the amount Bezos makes each hour, based on our calculations: $4,474,885.
- At that amount, it takes Bezos 12 milliseconds to earn $15.
Amazon on Tuesday announced plans to raise the company’s minimum wage in the US to $15.
The company said the salary increase, set to take effect November 1, would affect more than 250,000 full- and part-time employees in addition to more than 100,000 seasonal staff members.
“We listened to our critics, thought hard about what we wanted to do, and decided we want to lead,” CEO Jeff Bezos said. “We’re excited about this change and encourage our competitors and other large employers to join us.”
Amazon had been under sustained pressure over the amount it paid some of its workers as its CEO became the world’s richest person.
And while the new minimum wage is more than twice the federal minimum wage of $7.25, the new total is nowhere near what Bezos makes an hour.
Business Insider previously calculated the CEO's hourly salary by finding the difference between Bezos' 2017 and 2018 net worths - which we called his annual earnings - and then divided that amount by 8,760, the number of hours in a year. This estimation of Bezos' hourly wage is being used for the sake of comparison. A large portion of his wealth is tied to Amazon stock, which can increase or decrease in value at any given time
From 2017 to 2018, Bezos made $4,474,885 an hour.
An Amazon worker earning the $15 minimum wage would need to work about 298,325 hours, or 24 hours a day for about 34 years, just to earn what Bezos makes in one hour.
So how long does it take Bezos to earn $15? At the rate Business Insider calculated, he has earned $74,581 a minute and $1,243 a second. To earn $15, that's about .012 seconds, or 12 milliseconds - a little less than a third of the length of a single standard movie frame.
In the past year, Bezos earned an estimated $39.2 billion, compared with the $28,466 median annual worker pay at Amazon.