Amazon’s economic impact in the US

As Amazon celebrates 30 years, we’re proud of the strides we've made by investing in local communities, our employees, and leveraging our scale to do good.

In 2024 alone, we launched a range of new generative AI advancements including Amazon Nova, Trainium2 chips, and Rufus. We invested in nuclear energy projects, helped Prime members save billions on Prime Day deals, and mobilized our infrastructure and technology through Amazon Disaster Relief to support communities impacted by natural disasters.

Last year, we also made our largest investment in pay and benefits—$2.2 billion across our U.S. fulfillment and transportation network—to date. This means our hourly front-line employees now have an average base wage of more than $22 per hour and an average total compensation of more than $29 per hour when you include the value of their elected benefits.

From directly investing more than $1 trillion in the U.S. in our operations and cloud infrastructure since 2010, as well as creating more than 1 million jobs across the country we know our scale has a big impact. And our growth is spread across the entire country, not just in big cities.

More than 40% of Amazon’s 1 million employees are located in small towns across the country. And, in 2023, independent sellers in rural areas collectively achieved more than 60% year-over-year growth in our store.

Recent research by Oxford Economics dove into the socioeconomic benefits of large employers like Amazon and they found that an Amazon fulfillment center in Wilmington, Delaware “…revived a shuttered work location and created quality employment opportunities for local workers.” In fact, our own data shows that on average 47% of the people we hire for logistics roles were previously unemployed and our U.S. investments support nearly 5 million jobs nationwide.

The Progressive Policy Institute once again ranked Amazon as its No.1 Investment Hero, meaning that Amazon invested more in the U.S. than any other American company in 2023, and we’ve also been one of the largest spenders in research and development (R&D), spending tens of billions of dollars each year to drive new technologies to make our workplace safer and jobs more fulfilling, improve our products, and better serve our customers.

Another way we contribute to social and economic objectives are through our tax contributions. In addition to the direct taxes that we pay and the direct investments we make, there are additional taxes we pay and administer for governments on behalf of our customers, employees, and third-party sellers.

Together, Amazon’s 2024 tax contributions include:

$9 billion of current federal income tax expense
$6.2 billion in federal taxes that include employer payroll taxes, customs duties, and other taxes and fees
$25.9 billion in other federal, state, and local taxes collected on behalf of employees
$7.2 billion in state and local taxes of all types
$30 billion in sales taxes we collected and remitted on behalf of states and localities throughout the U.S.

We know none of these contributions would be possible without our employees, sellers, and customers. We’re excited about the future, and we will continue to keep pace with our commitment to invest, invent, create jobs, and lift the communities in which we operate.

Learn more about Amazon’s global economic impact and tax contribution.

Learn more about Amazon’s global approach to tax.