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Amazon upped Prime subscription price by $20

Subscriptions will now run $139 per year, rather than $119.

An Amazon facility.

The price hike will help balance out the costs of "labor supply shortages and inflationary pressure," CEO Andy Jassy said.

Photo: Yender Gonzalez/Unsplash

Amazon raised the annual cost of Amazon Prime memberships by $20 a year to offset increasing wage and supply-chain costs, the company announced in its Thursday earnings release.

Starting Feb. 18, annual Prime memberships will go up from $119 to $139 per year, or a monthly cost increase to $14.99 from $12.99. Current Prime members will be affected by the price change after March 25 on the date of their next renewal. The price hike will help balance out the costs of "labor supply shortages and inflationary pressure," CEO Andy Jassy said, which began over the holidays.

"These issues persisted into the first quarter due to omicron,” Jassy said in the release. The company also attributed the cost increase to "the rise in wages and transportation costs" in its release.

Amazon previously raised Prime prices in 2018 from $99 annually to $119, and upped them from $79 to $99 prior to that in 2014. The company has more than 200 million Prime subscribers.

Amazon Prime's fast delivery times are a key part of its business, but come at a steep cost: The company's shipping costs increased 10% year over year in the in the fourth quarter, up to $23.6 billion.

Nat Rubio-Licht

Nat Rubio-Licht is a Los Angeles-based news writer at Protocol. They graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in newspaper and online journalism in May 2020. Prior to joining the team, they worked at the Los Angeles Business Journal as a technology and aerospace reporter.

amazonamazon primeandy jassyprice changesprice hikesubscriptions
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