“If we say Amazon is the biggest opportunity for people here, that is an understatement,” says Matt Littrell, who works at SDF1, an Amazon fulfillment center in Campbellsville, Kentucky, a small town in farm country, about ninety minutes from both Lexington and Louisville. “Some people commute more than an hour to get here. The whole area really is dependent on them.”

Twenty-two-year-old Littrell is a picker at the warehouse, a position that entails gathering items to prepare them for orders. He’s worked at the site for about fifteen months, a not-insignificant tenure given the company’s 150 percent turnover rate. He works night shift, which pays a shift differential of an additional $1.50 per hour on top of the base pay, which as of April 2021 is $15.50.

For the latter half of the twentieth century, Campbellsville was centered around a Fruit of the Loom factory. The economy was timed to the rhythms of the site that at one point employed 4,200 people.