Surplus vs. Survival: Amazon can afford to raise wages; not all businesses are so fortunate

Amazon, the online retail powerhouse, made news this week by announcing it will raise its minimum wage for all employees-whether full time, part time or seasonal-to $15 an hour.

That's good news for a whole lot of people-about 250,000 regular employees and around 100,000 who are on the payroll seasonally. It includes workers at Amazon-owned Whole Foods as well.

Some of those workers are in Texas and Arkansas-where the official state minimum wage is quite a bit lower. Both states have Whole Foods markets and Amazon currently has a physical presence in Texas with warehouses and packaging facilities. A distribution center is planned for North Little Rock.

That's the good part.

Amazon also said it would lobby for an increase in the federal minimum wage-currently $7.25 and stagnant for nearly a decade.

It's all well and good for a company that's booming-like Amazon-to share the wealth with its employees. We think it's a fine thing to do, in fact.

But it's a decision that Amazon can afford to make.

The problem is that companies like Amazon are putting the squeeze on thousands of small, medium and even large retail business in our area and across the nation. As online retailers grow, brick-and-mortar companies face rising costs and lower profits. They would probably like to raise wages, but being forced to do so by law could threaten their existence-and the jobs of their employees.

It's great Amazon made the decision to raise its minimum wage. But the company should not assume what's good for Amazon and its workers is right for every other company. For a lot of businesses out there the question is not what to do with all their profits, it's how to stay alive in a changing market environment.

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