The new blue-collar workplace reshaping America, for better or worse

Since the end of the Great Recession, a major force has changed the landscape and the working life for millions of Americans: warehouses.

It's a world that is kept far from the box delivered to your doorstep, but, as warehouses expand into more cities and neighborhoods, it's creeping closer every year.

Here, Insider explores how the warehouse industry is reshaping American life in ways many of us simply don't see.

We found warehouses to be a double-edged sword for the US. They bring new jobs and higher wages to blue-collar workers but can severely strain local infrastructure — and the human body.

Warehouse boomtowns

Satellite photography from the past 20 years shows warehouses have transformed the American landscape in states like California, Texas, Ohio, and Washington.

California's Inland Empire was among the first US regions to acutely feel the warehouse boom. Its proximity to two coastal ports and its large labor force made the former heart of California's citrus empire ripe for warehousing.

In San Bernardino, California, big-box distribution centers replaced orchards, bringing jobs to a city that needed them — but also introducing road congestion and pollution from idling trucks. As the city recovered from the housing crash, a decommissioned Air Force base was developed into a cargo airport, and Amazon and others moved in.

Columbus, Ohio, has welcomed the warehousing industry.

A large immigrant population, including the second-largest Somali community in the US, has helped staff the warehouses. Local operators have installed prayer rooms and hung flags from workers' home countries in office bullpens to attract and retain staff.

Sumner, Washington, just 30 miles from Amazon's headquarters, was hardly a logistics powerhouse at the turn of the millennium. Warehouse operators — including Amazon — quickly realized its easy access to highways made it ideal.

Fort Worth, Texas, has a long history as a warehousing hub for the wholesale market, thanks to its location at the intersection of three major interstate highways.

The expansion of a cargo airport in North Fort Worth made it an appealing location for e-commerce warehouses looking to export and import goods from overseas.

Warehouses are appearing in new places

As we demand faster delivery, warehouses are also springing up in city centers and affluent neighborhoods.

In New York City, a 1.2-million-square foot, three-story warehouse grows less than 2 miles from where the Yankees play, while another warehouse fills an abandoned multiplex movie theater.

Nationwide, warehouse rent prices have more than doubled since 2010, while vacancy rates have plunged to historic lows. Supply can't keep up with demand.

The high demand means places like the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania have been flooded with warehouses, and residents are struggling to slow the growth.

Two huge investment firms, Prologis and Blackstone, have become the largest warehouse landlords in the world after a decade-long buying spree. Smaller operators have quickly made a fortune by investing in tight markets where rents have skyrocketed.

The spike in warehouse workers

As warehouses have multiplied, the industry's workforce has nearly tripled to 1.8 million since 2010.

The rise of online shopping has intensified demand, since e-commerce warehouses need about three times as many workers as a wholesale warehouse of a similar size. When the coronavirus pandemic set in, demand for warehouse work grew even more intense, with hundreds of thousands of Americans working in warehouses for the first time.

Warehouse work pays well — often double the local minimum wage — for people without college degrees or specialized trade skills.

But it's dangerous work: The rate of injury is higher than in mining, construction, or logging. Organizing efforts have sprung up, as some unions see the pace and danger of warehouse work as a chance to mobilize.

The Amazon of it all

Amazon has changed warehousing perhaps more than any other company.

Amazon's warehouse footprint ballooned over the past decade, with the pandemic kicking things into overdrive.

The analyst Marc Wulfraat estimates that Amazon built 356 new warehouses in the US in 2021 — nearly one warehouse a day.

Even after slowing construction in 2022, it's on pace to build 211 new warehouses this year.

Amazon employs roughly 700,000 people in its warehouses, more than any other company in the US. To keep its warehouses staffed, Amazon was hiring on average 2,800 people a day, or over half a million people, in the second half of 2021.

It churns through workers at an incredible rate. A leaked memo from 2021, first reported by Recode, showed Amazon warehouses had annual turnover of 159% in 2020. That same memo predicted Amazon would exhaust the warehousing labor pool in certain cities by 2024.

And Amazon created the expectation that online orders arrive at our doorstep within 48 hours.

Amazon Prime's free two-day shipping was once a luxury. Now it's table stakes; to compete in e-commerce, you need to deliver in two days to almost anywhere in the US.

Companies far smaller than Amazon are forced to build or buy their way toward matching that speed.

Which means even more warehouses, and even more warehouse workers.