Oct. 14 (UPI) — Amazon says it will add hundreds of thousands of new temporary jobs for the holiday season.
On Monday, the company said about 250,000 were soon expected to be hired as Amazon took steps to again ramp up staff levels to handle a large uptick in number of online retail orders. It pointed to a focus on America’s struggling rural communities in its year-end hiring spree.
“We find that our seasonal roles are really popular — often filling up within minutes of being posted — because they meet different needs for so many different people,” according to Sandy Gordon, Amazon’s VP of global operations.
Seasonal roles for Amazon’s busy period runs roughly from October through December and this year’s compensation is an average of over $19 an hour. Regular full and part-time wages average an hourly $23 plus benefits.
“For some, it’s a few months of extra income to support their families during the holidays,” Gordon said in a release. “For others, it’s the first step in building a new career path.”
It follows other past hiring trends by the e-commerce retail giant for the third year in a row.
In 2021 the Jeff Bezos-owned company revealed plans to add some 150,000 temporary and seasonal employees to its workforce.
That year, seasonal workers earned anywhere between $17 and $28 per hour.
Amazon’s 2023 seasonal hiring wave reportedly was around 100,000 more than it intended to bring on during the prior winter holiday season the same year Amazon opened around 50 or more new U.S.-based facilities.
But rising inflation, innovations in artificial intelligence and tax-like tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump likely will be all economic factors over the next several months.
According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the overall number of seasonal jobs for this year is estimated to be at its lowest since 2009 under then-U.S. President Barack Obama.
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