Amazon

Amazon is a powerful engine of growth for the U.S. economy. Through innovation, investment, and job creation, Amazon is helping transform the economic potential of urban and rural communities across America.

Between 2010 and 2019, Amazon invested over $16.9 billion throughout Texas in infrastructure, including customer fulfillment, cloud infrastructure and research facilities, and employee compensation, contributing over $18.8 billion to the state GDP. In that time, Amazon has created over 43,000 full- and part-time jobs in Texas, and the company continues to hire as new operations open throughout the state. Additionally, over 116,000 independent authors and small and medium sized businesses in Texas are growing their businesses using Amazon.

Amazon offers an industry-leading minimum starting wage of $15 an hour, and full-time employees receive comprehensive benefits including full medical, vision, and dental insurance as well as a 401(k) with 50 percent match starting on day one. The company also offers up to 20 weeks of maternal and parental paid leave and innovative benefits such as Leave Share and Ramp Back, which give new parents flexibility with their growing families. In addition, Amazon has pledged to invest over $700 million to provide upskilling training for 100,000 U.S. employees for in-demand jobs. Programs will help Amazonians from all backgrounds access training to move into highly skilled roles across the company’s corporate offices, tech hubs, fulfillment centers, retails stores, and transportation network, or pursue career paths outside of Amazon.

Amazon’s main investments in Texas include 17 fulfillment and sortation centers, 10 delivery stations, 5 Prime Now hubs, 3 tech hubs in Austin, Dallas and Houston, and 4 Amazon Air hubs. In 2017, Amazon acquired Austin-headquartered Whole Foods Market, which now operates 35 store locations across the state.

Additionally, Amazon Wind Farm Texas was opened in 2017. The 253-megawatt wind farm is located in Scurry County in West Texas. As the company’s largest wind farm to date, the facility provides more than one million megawatt-hours of clean energy annually.

In July 2019, Amazon opened a tech hub in Houston with roles including software development engineering, solutions architecture, data analytics, professional services, product management, and account sales, in addition to teams dedicated to educating AWS customers and helping them grow their business. City leaders called this expansion a “leap” in jump-starting Houston’s burgeoning technology sector.

Amazon announced that it would expand its existing hub in North Austin in late 2019, creating 800 new tech-focused jobs in the city. In March and April 2020, Amazon announced an expansion of 175,000 new employees across the United States amid growing demand for home-delivered products during the coronavirus outbreak, with nearly 14,000 of these new hires located in Texas.