Before she worked at Amazon, Kimberly was stuck working the overnight shift. The hours were long, and she felt like she had no time to spend with family. Her pay—$11 an hour—wasn’t enough to keep up with the cost of living in south Florida, let alone save money.
She knew she needed to try to make a switch when a friend told her she could earn Amazon’s starting wage of $15 an hour at the company’s fulfillment center a short commute away in Opa-Locka. The friend already worked there and recommended it.
Kimberly applied in the summer of 2019 and convinced her mom to apply, too—”because I love spending time with her. We got hired the same day. We have the same schedule. We commute to work every day. We go home every day together.”
The new job brought huge change to her life: “I was unhappy and sleep-deprived. And now [that] I’m working here, I have a better position. When I leave at the end of the day, I’m still energized. And I go home, and I can still run errands and do what I need to do. So I’m happy.”
Beyond that, there’s the difference she’s enjoying by making $15 an hour—more than double the U.S. federal minimum wage and $4 more than she made working the overnight shift at her last job.