Amazon to open center in St. Louis suburb

ST. PETERS, Mo. — Amazon is planning to open a large packing and shipping facility in suburban St. Louis that will employ more than 1,500 fulltime workers.

The Seattle-based online retailer announced plans Wednesday for the 800,000 square-foot fulfillment center in St. Peters.

The Missouri Department of Economic Development said Amazon could receive more than $11 million in state incentives.

Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens said in a video posted to Twitter that Amazon was investing $175 million in the facility. next five years to build a huge data center outside of Atlanta.

Gov. Nathan Deal held a news conference Wednesday afternoon to announce that the social media giant’s 9th U.S. data center will be built in Newton County, about 45 miles east of downtown Atlanta.

Deal says the data center will lead to the creation of more than 100 full-time jobs. Consisting of two buildings occupying about 970,000 square feet, the center will be powered exclusively with renewable energy.

It’s expected to be fully operational in 2020. of the struggles the country is facing in boosting worker efficiency.

The flat reading the Labor Department reported Wednesday was a slight improvement over an initial estimate a month ago that productivity had actually fallen at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 0.1 percent last quarter.

Labor costs rose at an annual rate of 2.5 percent in the fourth quarter, a modest gain that followed a 1 percent increase in the third quarter.

For the year, productivity rose 1.2 percent, a weak performance but a slight improvement from no gain at all in 2016.

Boosting productivity is seen as the country’s biggest economic challenge.

The zero growth in productivity in 2016 was the poorest performance in 35 years, since productivity fell by 1 percent in 1982.