While many businesses were forced to shutter their doors and lay off their workforce in the early days of the pandemic, Amazon had an entirely different situation on its hands. Consumers flocked in droves to the online marketplace, no longer willing to risk in-person exposure for their grocery and shopping needs. While the rest of the world was shutting down, Amazon was ramping up.
As I wrote after the company’s first post-Covid earnings report, this increase in business was not quite the all-out windfall for Amazon one might expect given the surge of online commerce. Instead of taking the money and running, the company reinvested billions of its revenue in the safety of its employees and customers and other crucial Covid relief efforts.
One of Amazon’s biggest contributions to our pandemic-stricken society has been its reliable status as a job creator. While hiring freezes were battering much of the world economy over…