Amazon is gearing up to recruit a whopping 250,000 workers ahead of the upcoming holiday shopping season, the company announced in a blog post on Tuesday.
The new hires will encompass full-time, part-time and seasonal employees, offering competitive hourly rates ranging from $17 to $28, depending on location. Some of the roles include packing, sorting, and shipping customer orders, among others.
Amazon’s initiative comes amid anticipation of the lowest holiday hiring surge since 2008, as estimated by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, per Bloomberg.
In its bid to attract and retain employees, the company is also raising the average pay for logistics staff to approximately $20.50 per hour. Furthermore, Amazon has sweetened the deal by introducing bonuses ranging from $1,000 to $3,000 for certain hires.
“Whether someone is looking for a short-term way to make extra money, or is hoping to take their first step toward a fulfilling and rewarding career at Amazon, there’s a role available for them,” John Felton, senior vice president of Worldwide Operations at Amazon, said in the post. “A fulfillment or transportation employee who starts with us today will see a 13% increase in pay over the next three years — likely more, including our annual wage investments — and that’s on top of offerings like prepaid college tuition with Career Choice and healthcare benefits from day one.”
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The hiring move aligns with Amazon’s customary practice of scaling up its workforce during the fall season to ensure an adequate labor pool for the critical holiday shopping period. In the previous year, Amazon committed to bringing on board 150,000 workers, and in 2019, it pledged to hire 200,000 seasonal workers, per Bloomberg.
Amazon is the country’s second-largest private employer, behind Walmart.
However, Amazon isn’t the only big-name retailer aiming to add to its workforce before the holidays. Target announced on Tuesday plans to recruit nearly 100,000 seasonal workers, roughly the same as it hired last year.