Amazon AMZN is the undisputed online retail Goliath of the U.S., and Americans account for around 80% of the shopping site’s users worldwide. The Jeff Bezos-founded e-commerce behemoth shipped around 4.75 billion packages in 2021, and as of mid-2023, around 163.5 million Americans — almost half of the country’s population — were subscribed to Amazon Prime, the company’s premium paid membership service. As of 2022, the shipping and logistics giant had captured 37.8% of the U.S. retail e-commerce space by market share according to Statista, more than any other online retailer by a massive margin.
Just how does the self-proclaimed “most customer-centric company on Earth” accomplish this? Largely by harnessing the labor of its massive supply of fulfillment, sortation, and delivery associates — workers who are required to meet lofty package-handling quotas for relatively low hourly pay, and who quit and get dismissed at very high rates for the industry.
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In order to keep its massive fulfillment centers running efficiently, Amazon employs area managers responsible for overseeing the accuracy and efficiency of the package sorting, handling, and shipping processes. These aren’t your typical “white collar” desk jockeys though. Amazon’s area managers work largely on their feet, overseeing hectic shifts using a hands-on approach to ensure their not-so-little corner of Amazon’s massive and complex supply chain functions like a well-oiled machine.
These area manager jobs, unlike associate positions, require a bachelor’s degree and come with an annual salary instead of an hourly wage. Since these are exempt positions, they are not eligible for overtime pay — a fairly significant caveat for a job that, according to many anecdotal reports on Reddit and career sites like Indeed, regularly requires 50+ hour weeks and often requires 60–70 hour weeks during peak season (November and December).
Amazon fulfillment centers are massive warehouses.
Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images
How much do area managers make at Amazon?
As of late 2023, Amazon offers entry-level area managers starting salaries that range from $62,500 per year in areas with lower costs of living to $68,000 per year in higher-paid markets. This range represents the position’s base salary and does not include the value of bonuses, stock awards, or other perks and benefits.
According to Glassdoor, a careers site that uses user-submitted data to estimate salary ranges, area managers are likely to make around $84,000 per year, including a base salary of around $64,200, annual bonuses totaling around $9,500, and stock awards totaling around $10,200. The user-submitted data used to calculate these estimates comes from area managers with varying degrees of seniority, however, so it is unlikely that a new area manager would make this much in their first year.
With continued success in an area manager role, base pay, along with stock incentives and bonuses, can increase gradually, with some eventually earning six figures annually in total compensation.
What does an Amazon area manager do on a day-to-day basis?
An area manager is essentially an overseer of an Amazon fulfillment center for about 10 to 14 hours at a time. This means that they are responsible for the safety and productivity of a large team of Amazon associates (perhaps 50 to 100), whose jobs include picking, sorting, packing, routing, moving, and otherwise handling Amazon packages so they can move along the company supply chain toward the customer.
Amazon fulfillment centers are all about efficiency, and area managers are tasked with setting and meeting efficiency goals. This process involves hiring, training, monitoring, coaching — and sometimes firing and replacing — associates such that key performance indicators (i.e., package handling quotas) are met.
This is a high-paced role that demands, above all else, attentiveness, wakefulness, attention to detail, quick problem-solving, and the ability to effectively lead a team of laborers in a hectic and uncomfortable warehouse environment.
What are the advantages of working as an area manager for Amazon?
An area manager position at an Amazon fulfillment warehouse can be a solid jumping-off point for anyone with a college degree and aspirations to work in team management or project management, especially in the logistics industry. Internal promotions are common — according to some reports, as many as 20% of area managers get promoted each year. Amazon is a massive employer with opportunities all over the U.S. and the globe, so a wealth of future placements may be available for those looking to explore the role.
As such a large and well-established company, it is likely that the stock an area manager earns over time, once vested, could grow quite significantly in value, providing an additional incentive to remain with the massive publicly traded company.
What are the downsides of working as an area manager?
The downsides to working as an area manager at an Amazon fulfillment center are, unfortunately, many. Some of the most noticeable are stress, fatigue, physical exhaustion, and managing, disciplining and firing employees.
Area managers are responsible for ensuring targets are met, which means that, in addition to working long shifts on their feet, they must constantly monitor associate performance and remedy any situations that are preventing quotas from being met. This requires demanding a high level of performance from a large team of relatively underpaid laborers working nonstop in an often too-hot warehouse, which isn’t necessarily conducive to popularity. A large part of an area manager’s role is issuing documented warnings to associates for making mistakes or failing to meet goals and potentially taking disciplinary action, including termination, as per the company’s protocols.
Area managers routinely spend 50–70 hours each week in a large warehouse like this one.
(Photo by Nathan Stirk/Getty Images)
What benefits do Amazon’s area managers get?
Amazon’s benefits can vary depending on location, but in general, any Amazon employee who works more than 20 hours per week (which area managers certainly do) is eligible for a fairly standard suite of benefits, the highlights of which include the following:
Health and insurance benefits
Amazon employees can choose from a variety of sponsored healthcare plans through several different providers, including Cigna, Kaiser, Aetna, and Premera Blue Cross. The different plans come with different copays, deductibles, prescription drug prices, and out-of-pocket maximums, so employees can select the plan they believe will be most accessible and financially advantageous given their individual healthcare needs.
Employees can also choose from two different dental plans and two different vision plans. A full list of available plans and their details is available on Amazon’s jobs site.
Amazon also offers mental health referrals and five free counseling sessions (per specific issue) to each employee annually, and employees can choose to contribute to tax-advantaged health savings and flexible savings accounts as well.
Amazon provides free basic life insurance policies for all eligible employees, and supplemental insurance plans, including home, rent, auto, pet, accident, and illness, can also be purchased at a discount.
Financial benefits
Amazon employees can contribute to sponsored Roth or traditional 401(k) via deductions from their paycheck. The company matches employee contributions up to 4% of each paycheck at a rate of 50%, meaning an employee can get the maximum 2% match if they contribute 4%.
Employees may also receive grants of restricted stock units (RSUs) — special shares of company equity — that vest over time. Once the shares vest, they are assigned a fair market value and can be legally sold by the employee.
Time off
Amazon offers fairly robust paid leaves in certain circumstances. 14 weeks of paid leave for pregnancy are available with doctor-ordered short-term disability, while six weeks of paid parental leave are available to all employees after one year of employment.
Paid time off and sick time policies vary depending on location and are specified in each manager’s employment contract.
Additionally, due to the position’s exempt status and heavy workload, the pay may not actually be as good as it sounds. If an area manager works an average of 57 hours per week at an annual salary of $64,000, for instance, they are actually only earning around 21.59 per hour, assuming they work all 52 weeks of the year.
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Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
Below are answers to some of the most common questions prospective applicants have about the area manager role at Amazon.
What is an area manager intern?
For undergraduates who are still in school but plan to graduate within a year or so, Amazon offers 10-week summer internships through which students essentially work as an Amazon area manager. According to Amazon’s jobs site, these internships pay an hourly wage of $26.44 to $31.49 per hour depending on the geographic market.
Area manager vs. operations manager: What’s the difference?
Within the Amazon organization, Operations Manager 1 is the technical title for an area manager, while Operations Managers 2–4 are higher up in the organization. An Operations Manager 2, for instance, usually has three to five area managers under them.
Do you have to pass a drug or background test to be an area manager?
After receiving a job offer, a candidate must pass both a cheek-swab-style drug screen and a background check in order to complete the hiring process and become an area manager.
Are area managers exempt from overtime pay?
Area managers are salaried and exempt from overtime pay according to Amazon, although a California-based class-action lawsuit filed in 2022 asserts that the area manager role does not meet the “executive, administrative, or professional exemptions” required to assign exempt status and withhold overtime.
