“In a newly-released research paper, Evan Cunningham, a Ph.D candidate in Economics at the University of Minnesota, studied the effects of Amazon’s continued spread across the country—growing from just a handful of warehouses, or ‘fulfillment centers,’ in 2010, to more than 1,300 today in the U.S. alone. On balance, it turns out that Amazon warehouses provide a net positive to local economies.

‘I find Amazon’s entry in a metro [area] increases the total employment rate by 1.0 percentage points and average wages by 0.7 percent,’ Cunningham writes. ‘The composition of employment shifts from retail and wholesale trade to warehousing and tradeable services, primarily driven by younger workers. Employment gains are concentrated among non-college workers.'”

From Reason.