Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century

by Jessica Bruder

Of all the programs seeking workampers, the most aggressive recruiter has been Amazon’s CamperForce. “Jeff Bezos has predicted that, by the year 2020, one out of every four work campers in the United States will have worked for Amazon,” read one slide in a presentation for new hires. To find warm bodies, the company has set up recruiting kiosks at nomad-friendly events—mostly RV shows and rallies—in more than a dozen states across the country. Recruiters wear CamperForce T-shirts and pass out “NOW HIRING” fliers, along with promotional stickers, notepads, paper fans, tubes of lip balm, landscape calendars, and “koozies,” the neoprene sleeves that keep beer cans cold. All the objects bear the CamperForce logo: a black silhouette of an RV in motion, bearing Amazon’s “smile” insignia. More recently, that logo and a link to the recruiting website for CamperForce have appeared on large magnetic sunshades, made to cover the windshields of parked RVs. In 2015 these were presented as gifts to a handful of CamperForce workers, who were urged to put them up wherever they roam. Workers are also offered a referral bonus of $125—up from $50 in 2012—for each new hire they sign up.