Amazon is once again on a hiring spree ahead of the holiday season, opening 80,000 job opportunities for seasonal workers in the U.S.
Amazon.com, the largest online retailer, is preparing itself ahead of the busy holiday season by ramping up its workforce with seasonal workers. The e-commerce giant revealed its plans to hire 80,000 seasonal workers across its warehouse network in the U.S. to fulfill the increasing demand of its consumers. The new hiring spree is a 14 percent increase from last year and 40 percent up compared to 2012.
The new jobs will be distributed across its U.S. network of fulfillment and sortation centers in time for holidays. According to Amazon, there are over 50 fulfillment centers in the U.S. and it will expand its sortation centers to more than 15 by the end of this year. The expansion will largely cater to the changes that are expected to take place in the coming days. These changes include Sunday deliveries and later cut-off times for customers placing orders for products.
"So far this year, we have converted more than 10,000 seasonal employees in the U.S. into regular, full-time roles and we're looking forward to converting thousands more across our growing network of fulfillment and sortation centers after this holiday season," Mike Roth, Amazon's vice president of North America operations, said in a press statement, Thursday. "We're excited to be creating 80,000 seasonal jobs, thousands of which will lead to regular, full-time roles with benefits starting on day one and innovative programs like Career Choice for employees to further pursue their education."
According to a Wall Street Journal report, consensus analysts' estimate the new hiring process will translate to a 20 percent increase in the company's fourth quarter revenue.
Amazon offers extensive job benefits for full-time workers, like Career Choice, where it pays up to 95 percent of tuition fees for various courses, even if they do not match Amazon's job profiles. Some of the courses funded by Amazon include, game design and visual communications, nursing, IT programming and radiology, which clearly have a scope out of Amazon's network.
Amazon isn't the only company to increase its work force ahead of the holidays. According to the Journal, Macy's is expected to hire 86,000 seasonal workers, Kohl's plans to hire 67,000 workers and Gap has reported 63,000 seasonal jobs. United Parcel Service is said to open 90,000 to 95,000 jobs for the holidays.
