Study: Amazon's third-party delivery drivers had an injury rate of one per five full-time-equivalent workers in 2021, up 38% YoY, above other delivery drivers
Introduction Amazon's e-commerce business boomed during the COVID-19 pandemic …
Context & Ripple Effects
This study puts a number on a story VICE and others have been building for years: drivers for Amazon's third-party partners reported being overwhelmed by pandemic workloads in mid-2020, and Business Insider's 2018 interviews with 31 current and former drivers documented missing pay, no health insurance, and pace pressure at these contractors. The new data converts those anecdotes into a measurable injury rate — one per five full-time-equivalent workers in 2021, up 38% year over year.
It also extends an established pattern inside the company: a Washington Post analysis of 5,411 warehouses found Amazon workers suffering serious injuries at nearly double the rate of comparable companies in 2020. The difference here is that the injured workforce sits outside Amazon's direct employment, in the subcontracted last-mile network.
First-order effects
- Drivers in Amazon's third-party delivery network bear the immediate cost — an injury rate above other delivery drivers, in jobs where Business Insider reporting showed many lacked health insurance to absorb the consequences.
- Amazon faces fresh scrutiny of its Delivery Service Partner model, since the injury numbers attach to contractors it does not directly employ but whose routes, pace, and package volumes it sets.
Second-order effects
- The findings sharpen the liability question at the heart of the subcontracted last-mile model: Amazon controls the delivery tempo while partner companies carry the employment relationship, a split regulators and plaintiffs can now target with this data.
- Rival delivery networks face comparison pressure too — 'above other delivery drivers' gives every competitor and courier operator a benchmark they will be measured against by customers, insurers, and policymakers.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the cost of high-tempo parcel delivery keeps migrating off corporate books: later GAO data shows Amazon workers on federal aid nearly tripling from February 2020 to September 2025, with ride-hailing and delivery app employers carrying the most workers on aid — meaning public programs absorb what wages and safety spending do not cover.
- Structurally, the study strengthens the case for treating subcontracted delivery labor as a regulated category of its own, with injury-rate disclosure requirements that make the gap between brand owner and employer impossible to price around.
The trend: Last-mile e-commerce delivery is consolidating around subcontracted labor models whose injury and welfare costs are increasingly measured — and increasingly shifted onto workers and public aid rather than the platforms that set the pace.