It's tough for me to say because I've read multiple estimates and they vary by a factor of 10. Amazon's promises https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/amazon-selects-new... are one thing, what actually happens as the deal is approved and implemented is another.
I don't take Amazon's numbers seriously until they show that they will live up to their own hype. If Wisconsin's Scott Walker was elected on making 250,000 new jobs in 2010 he has fallen far short of that. One of his job-creating deals was Foxconn, something he used to tout heavily but tried to shy away from when he last ran. Foxconn's 13,000 (I'm assuming human) job figure for Wisconsin hasn't been met. I'll believe it when I see it but I still don't see how New York is getting a fair deal in this; it seems like they have no problem attracting businesses to their city and don't need to give nearly as much as they are.
Some of the highlights of the jobs points that makes it clear the exact figure of the promised number of jobs is virtually irrelevant precisely because so little is asked of Amazon here:
- Ben Norton says that in 2017 NYC gained over 72,000 new jobs. Therefore the money NYC is giving Amazon with virtually no strings attached effectively buys them about 4 months of job growth. That's a remarkably low number of jobs for such a large amount of money.
- It's not even clear if the 25,000 jobs are new jobs or if Amazon will shift workers from one location to HQ2. This means New Yorkers are subsidizing job movement for extant employees.
- There are no performance guarantees for Amazon in this -- if Amazon doesn't add the promised number of jobs, or if those jobs turn out to be significantly less attractive (perhaps near minimum-wage jobs, it takes Amazon a decade to add these jobs, or the jobs are done remotely thus pitting New Yorkers against the rest of the world) there's no penalty for Amazon to pay. No Amazon profit-sharing to NYC.
