‘Regretted Attrition:’ Amazon Is Losing the Workers It Wants to Keep at a Faster Rate

Leaked documents reportedly show that Amazon employees are quitting at twice the rate of recent years due to low pay and increased competition. The documents show that “regretted” attrition, the loss of employees that Amazon wanted to keep, has reached more than 12 percent, or double the recent average.

Business Insider reports that Amazon is facing major employee retention issues, with workers quitting at twice the rate of previous years, according to leaked documents. An internal Amazon metric called “regretted” attrition has reportedly reached 12.1 percent since June 2021 which is double the average of recent years.

From 2016 to mid-2021 the company’s regretted attrition number hovered at around five percent. The metric refers to the portion of employees Amazon doesn’t want to leave, usually through voluntary departures. Amazon also tracks “unregretted” attrition, which is the number of employees the company is willing to lose.

The spike in regretted attrition is reportedly one of the fallouts of rising inflation. Due to wage inflation and competition for talent making it easier for the company’s prized employees to find better opportunities elsewhere, many are leaving at a rapid pace.

Amazon employees speaking to Business Insider stated that Amazon’s relatively low pay, a stagnant stock price, and intense and harsh work culture have added to the growing departure rate. Amazon attempted to address these issues by raising the base pay ceiling for corporate employees and is on pace to spend a record amount on employee stock grants.

Amazon’s increased attrition rates are noticeable given that the company previously prided itself on retaining high talent employees and senior executives. In 2019, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy was operating as the CEO of Amazon Web Services and kept his team’s regretted attrition rate at 4.75 percent. AWS’s SVP of global infrastructure, Peter DeSantis, successfully kept his team’s rate at 4.83 percent.

Read more at Business Insider here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com