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If you want to blame one company for the surge in inflation over the past year, blame Amazon. When e-commerce demand leaped at the onset of the pandemic in 2020, the retailer decided to expand capacity to meet higher growth forecasts. Then, when the labor market started tightening a year ago, Amazon pressed ahead, paying whatever it took to build more fulfillment centers, buy more trucks, and hire more drivers and distribution center workers.
On the most recent quarterly earnings conference call on Thursday, the company announced it has now built out the capacity it needed. It is even overstaffed with excess warehouse capacity, and plans to pull back on hiring and investing in the short term while it waits for demand to catch up.
This is probably the best leading indicator you can get that general inflationary pressures in the economy should begin easing over the next couple of quarters.
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