Amazon’s new $15 minimum wage vs. Jeff Bezos’ hourly earnings

Bezos announced plans to
raise Amazon’s minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Alex Wong/Getty Images

• Amazon announced on Tuesday
  it plans to raise the company’s minimum wage in the US to $15 —
  twice the federal minimum wage of $7.25.
• The minimum wage increase is pennies compared to what
  Bezos makes per hour, based
  on our calculations — $4,474,885.
• That means it takes Bezos 12 milliseconds to earn $15.

Amazon announced on Tuesday that it
plans to raise the company’s minimum wage in the US to $15.

The salary increase, set to
take effect on November 1, is supposed to affect more than
250,000 full- and part-time employees, in addition to more than
100,000 seasonal staff members. It follows sustained pressure
from Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders, although Amazon is
distancing itself from the suggestion that the move is in
response to the senator. 

“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.”

While it’s twice the federal minimum wage of $7.25, the
minimum wage increase 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.

From 2017 to 2018, Bezos made $4,474,885 an hour.

Bezos makes more than $4
million an hour.
Shayanne Gal/Business
Insider

An Amazon worker earning the $15 minimum wage would need to
work around 298,325 hours just to earn what Bezos makes in one
hour — that’s the number of hours in 34 years.

So how long does it take Bezos to earn $15? At the rate
of $4,474,885 an hour, he earns $74,581 a minute and $1,243
per 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 to the current $28,466 median annual worker
pay at Amazon.