Amazon invests in Costa Rica jobs

Skilled workforce helps nation carve out profitable niche

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — In the 19th century, the customs house in the Costa Rican capital brimmed with the imported wares that first helped the tiny Spanishspeaking nation become part of the world economy.

During a balmy weekend last month, the old brick-andiron warehouse in San Jose was packed again, this time with multilingual financial analysts and software developers attending a job fair organized by Costa Rica’s foreign-investment promotion agency.

Among the opportunities that lured some of the 8,300 job-seekers was the possibility of a job with Amazon. com — a company that, since 2008, has morphed into a major employer there, with more than 4,000 workers.

“I buy stuff from them all the time,” said Ginette Morales, a 35-year-old with experience in the financialservices industry, who was among dozens milling about Amazon’s booth at the job fair.

Amazon’s investment, and that of other multinational companies, helped make Costa Rica an important provider of a broad suite of corporate services for global firms that employ local software engineers, accountants and lawyers as well as customer-support and back-office workers.

It’s a relationship that’s worked well for the tiny Central American nation — a formerly agrarian country that has leveraged a skilled population to carve itself a profitable niche in the world economy. It also helps corporate behemoths tap into a global vein of talent, often at a cost that’s half the amount it is in the U.S.

The model illustrates the proliferation of cross-border supply chains that surged in two decades of nearly unfettered globalization. It’s a model, however, that’s being challenged by economic populism that helped put Donald Trump in the White House.

The change in the U.S. political mood, and Trump’s willingness to use social media to lambaste companies he perceives as job exporters, has prompted many firms, including Amazon, to focus attention on how many American jobs they’re creating.

Costa Rican officials acknowledge the changing landscape in Washington, D.C., and understand how U.S. companies might become sensitive to it. “Nobody wants in this moment to exhibit themselves … and earn a tweet,” said Alexander Mora, Costa Rica’s foreign-trade minister.

But Mora, who estimates that about 27,000 Costa Ricans work in corporate services related to the U.S. market, argues that this sector of the economy is likely to grow. That’s partly because of strong links with the United States, but also because Costa Rica offers skills in short supply in the U.S. labor market, such as software development.

Also, on the lower end of the skill set, many technical-and customer-support roles at U.S. companies operating in Costa Rica are geared to serve Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking markets in Latin America and elsewhere.

“Our services sector is very complementary with that of the U.S.,” Mora said.

Seattle-based Amazon declined to comment.

In September, before Trump’s election, Amazon was trumpeting the addition of 1,500 jobs in Costa Rica, which would bring its head count there to 5,500.

That’s less than 2 percent of Amazon’s total worldwide workforce of 341,400, but the company’s Costa Rican payroll makes it a big fish in the country of fewer than 5 million people. According to government data compiled in November by El Financiero, a financial newspaper, Amazon was the fifth-largest private employer in Costa Rica.