Hello, everyone, and welcome to the second episode of MBIT Markets Business Investing And Tech Podcast. We're so happy you guys could join us Madan, and we have 2 news stories. First of all, Amazon hires over 400,000 employees to keep up with increased demand and holiday sales. The question is, will these workers be laid off after the demand dies down or even after the pandemic? And for our second story, Pfizer's 90% in active vaccine.
And what could this mean for the US economy and big tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Apple? As they have received more demand during COVID as everyone is at home. Alright, everyone. Let's jump into it. For our first story, the workers' Amazon just recently hired are the most demanded people hired in that sort of a time span in the US, meaning no US company has ever. Hired that amount of workers in that short of a time period.
Of the workers, Amazon employees, though, in the United States, 85% of them Our frontline workers who are in a minimum wage of $15 an hour, which is more than double the federal minimum wage of 7.20 cents. Now it didn't always used to be this way until a couple years ago, where Bezos decided to increase the minimum wage for employees because of the criticism Amazon was facing of low employee wages.
This is especially important in times where higher pay health care benefits and more go a long way for minimum wage workers. The question that arises is will Amazon keep these workers or let them go after COVID 19. With Amazon continuing to lower their delivery time, and with more and more demand is quite likely Amazon will keep the workers employed for a longer period of time. Unless technology like the robot progress further where it isn't needed to keep all the employees. Alright.
For our second story, let's just jump right into it. Pfizer's 90% effective vaccine. In the past month, Pfizer's stock is up 13.6%. And right after Pfizer's announcement, other COVID stocks like zoom, Peloton, and Amazon, did decrease a little as investors worked, planning that COVID will be around longer than it will be now after Pfizer's terrific news.
Although in the other hand, Jim Kramer's a little skeptical about the announcement as he put it, this is not a company that is a Braggart company. So I'm very surprised to see them come out this early. Jim Kramer believes that because of how quickly Pfizer's results were released and how it does not follow what they have done in the past, There may be some false hope. Only time will tell though. When doctor Fauci was interviewed about this news, he said that the results were extraordinary.
Now that's extremely important because Doctor Fauci is one of the most recognized doctors on the planet. And with his positive perspective, It could be more likely that we could have a vaccine sooner than we thought. And, bam, just a little over a week later, the UK approved the COVID vaccine from Pfizer. Investors gave Pfizer a 4% bump because of the news to the stock as a reward.
Now this announcement from UK puts pressure on the FDA to release their conclusion about whether or not this vaccine is safe enough for the United States. And with that note, thank you, everyone, for tuning into NBIT Markets Business Investing And Tech Podcast, and I will see you on the next one with some new stories. Disclaimer, the MBIT podcast is reflecting the opinion of only the host. The podcast is for informational purposes only.
The podcast is not a research report and is not a recommendation to purchase or sell any stocks, holdings, or securities. The podcast is also not meant to serve as the basis of any investment decision.