Rising minimum wages across the country will raise the costs of e-commerce operations, according to a CBRE report released Friday.
The report says a $1/hour increase in wages could add more than $1M in annual costs for a warehouse employing 500 people, and the impact will be even bigger for e-commerce facilities, whose operations are often two to four times as labor-intensive as a typical warehouse.
Yet e-commerce businesses aren’t likely to relocate due to rising wages anytime soon—wages account for a much smaller percentage of their operating costs than transportation, the Wall Street Journal reports.
LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago and Washington, DC, are among the cities that have set minimum wages beyond the federal minimum of $7.25/hour, and 11 states are slated to have a minimum wage over $10 by 2022. [WSJ]
