1,000 New Jobs Available at Oak Creek Amazon Center
- Author: Michael Bordonada
- Posted: 2024-03-31
As of 2020, Amazon is one of the nation’s top employers with over 580,000 people holding down a job with one of their many centers. Amazon seems to always be in the news for something, even if it’s having a distribution center blocked in New York and residents losing out on thousands of jobs. This isn’t the case in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, however, as the huge company has recently settled in and is now looking for 1,000 qualified residents to fill jobs in the fulfillment center being opened there in only a few short weeks.
The city of Oak Creek is relatively small in comparison to many metro areas around the nation, and it seems on its face like a very unlikely place for Amazon to set up shop. Though what the company seems to be doing now more than anything else is building more fulfillment centers in sporadic locations. This is so they can greatly improve their shipping times and customer satisfaction. Amazon’s Oak Creek location will be their latest addition to Midwestern fulfillment, and 1,000 citizens of the 37,000 who live in the city may be getting a new job pretty soon.
The government of Oak Creek has been looking forward to this happening for a couple of years now, but the ball really got rolling on finishing the construction and zoning when the novel coronavirus reared its head and we ended up with a global Covid-19 pandemic. Cities like Oak Creek aren’t huge hubs of commerce like New York and Los Angeles, so they take a lot longer to recover when there’s any sort of economic downturn. Oak Creek also isn’t even one of the larger cities in the state, so they don’t get much in the way of federal funding to help out with commerce and infrastructure. So, for the overall economy of the city, Amazon moving in couldn’t come at a better time. Not only does it bring reliable, good paying jobs to a thousand residents, but it also provides a lot of tax revenue that the city could definitely use.
Although the population of Oak Creek isn’t very large, the city has a lot going for it, being part of Milwaukee county. They have a couple of professional sporting franchises and thus get a lot of tourism. It’s a fairly busy city during basketball and baseball season, but both have been cut short because of the pandemic. For baseball in particular, the Brewers stadium remains empty, as Major League Baseball is still imposing its no-fans policy, which means that locals aren’t allowed to show up and sell their concessions. This has hit many people hard, as a lot of Oak Creek residents relied on this sort of income. Having Amazon come in to plug up a few holes is a good thing for everyone.
The Fight for and Against Amazon
To the casual observer, it’s hard to figure out why Amazon is so polarizing. They’re merely a distribution service that has become incredibly popular online, so much so that Amazon’s owner, Jeff Bezos, is the world’s richest man. Though for a laundry list of reasons, politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stand in vehement opposition to Amazon moving in and offering jobs to people. The odd thing about this is that Amazon pays more than minimum wage, offers a 401k, benefits, and gives paid leave – everything that liberal Democrat politicians claim to want. Though every time Amazon tries to open a new location, the Democratic party attempts to block it.
Oak Creek’s residents are by and large feeling lucky that the Democratic portion of their city government was unsuccessful at blocking Amazon, but they certainly did try. All over the nation right now, there are politicians fighting to block big-box stores like Walmart and Target from moving in, along with a long line of other large corporations that want to set up shop in lesser populated areas to increase their reach. The citizens seem to be fighting for more jobs that pay better, while many politicians seem to be fighting against. Ironically, these same politicians keep getting voted back into office, despite their open opposition to companies that offer to pay people well for labor.
Amazon has quite a few other places in mind for the future, and they’re also planning on entering New York one way or the other. Though, for right now, Oak Creek is the corporation’s latest stop.
