Amazon is raising its minimum wage to $15 an hour - here's how much CEO Jeff Bezos makes in that same 60 minutes
- Amazon announced on Tuesday it plans to raise the company's minimum wage in the US to $15 - twice the federal minimum wage of $7.25.
- The minimum wage increase is pennies compared to what Bezos makes per hour, based on our calculations - $4,474,885.
- That means it takes Bezos 12 milliseconds to earn $15.
Amazon announced on Tuesday that it plans to raise the company's minimum wage in the US to $15.
The salary increase, set to take effect on November 1, is supposed to affect more than 250,000 full- and part-time employees, in addition to more than 100,000 seasonal staff members. It follows sustained pressure from Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders, although Amazon is distancing itself from the suggestion that the move is in response to the senator.
"We listened to our critics, thought hard about what we wanted to do, and decided we want to lead," CEO Jeff Bezos said. "We're excited about this change and encourage our competitors and other large employers to join us."
While it's twice the federal minimum wage of $7.25, the minimum wage increase is nowhere near what Bezos makes an hour.
Business Insider previously calculated the CEO's hourly salary by finding the difference between Bezos' 2017 and 2018 net worths - which we called his annual earnings - and then divided that amount by 8,760, the number of hours in a year.
From 2017 to 2018, Bezos made $4,474,885 an hour.
An Amazon worker earning the $15 minimum wage would need to work around 298,325 hours just to earn what Bezos makes in one hour - that's the number of hours in 34 years.
So how long does it take Bezos to earn $15? At the rate of $4,474,885 an hour, he earns $74,581 a minute and $1,243 per second. To earn $15, that's about .012 seconds, or 12 milliseconds - a little less than a third of the length of a single standard movie frame.
In the past year, Bezos earned an estimated $39.2 billion, compared to the current $28,466 median annual worker pay at Amazon.