Hands, heads and robots work in sync at Amazon warehouses

DuPONT, Pierce County — The thousands of bright orange automatons that haul shelves full of merchandise at Amazon’s fulfillment center here could be seen as a sign of the impending doom of the human workforce.

But the 500 or so full-time workers employed at this site have something robots won’t have for many years, according to experts. Humans have an intuitive understanding of the movement of objects, and fine motor skills that give them a firm hold on key warehouse operations like packaging and stowing goods.

That helps explain why Amazon.com, despite its worship of technology-driven efficiency, is well on its way to becoming the second-largest employer among Fortune 500 companies, mainly because of jobs in its warehouses. The company has 30,000 robots — but more than 230,000 employees, not counting the temporary staff it hires during the peak holiday period. In Kent alone, where Amazon just built a latest-generation fulfillment center, the company is hiring 1,200 employees this year.

At a time when automation stokes anxiety about the future of many jobs, these warehouse workers underscore both the promise and the current limits of automation.

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