Amazon to increase base pay cap for employees as it competes for workers

The new cap will be set at $350,000

Amazon will increase its maximum base pay cap to $350,000. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News)

SAN FRANCISCO — Amazon said it would increase the amount of base pay its corporate employees can make in the United States due to a tight labor market and competitors that sometimes pay better.

Corporate and tech employees can now make up to $350,000 in base pay, an increase from the previous $160,000 cap that had been in place for several years. Base pay is just one piece of how Amazon employees get paid — they also generally receive substantial payments in stock and bonuses.

Amazon made the change to bring in and keep employees in a “particularly competitive labor market,” the company wrote in an internal blog post Monday. Amazon also said it was increasing overall compensation ranges for most jobs worldwide. The bumps are “much more considerable than we’ve done in the past,” the company wrote.

Amazon confirmed the authenticity of the blog post, which was first reported by Seattle tech news site GeekWire. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

Employers across the country face an increasingly discerning labor pool in which workers are often in a position of power — particularly amid the backdrop of a movement dubbed the Great Resignation. Employees in many fields, including tech, are in high demand, and they can push for better pay, benefits or flexible work situations when weighing job offers.

Amazon is the second-largest private employer in the United States. It announced in a regulatory filing last week that it had 1.6 million full-time and part-time workers at the end of the year.