“There are huge benefits to consumers from Amazon,” said Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard who studies labor and technological change. The Amazon announcement comes as the company is introducing automation that could one day cost jobs. The job losses in these two sectors of retail alone are nearly double all the jobs created by all online retailers since 2000. There are 16 million retail workers in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a figure that includes online sellers like Amazon and traditional stores. Amazon has said that its employment figures alone do not capture its full effect on jobs.

Source: New York Times January 13, 2017 02:10 UTC