AMZN Amazon.com Inc

By Katie Honan 

Only half of the positions that Amazon.com Inc. has promised to bring to its new headquarters in Long Island City, Queens, will be tech jobs, New York City officials said Tuesday night.

During a presentation to local residents, officials from the city's Economic Development Corp. said that of the at least 25,000 jobs that the online retailer plans to bring to the waterfront community in Queens, 12,500 will be in tech.

The other half will be "administrative jobs, custodial staff, HR, all those things," said Eleni Bourinaris-Suarez, vice president of government and community relations at the EDC, which helped broker the deal with Amazon.

Amazon announced last week that it would set up shop in Long Island City, with the support of up to $3 billion in city and state tax incentives and grants that are contingent on the creation of at least 25,000 jobs. At that time, It did not provide a breakdown of the jobs that would be created but said the average annual salary would be $150,000.

The company also chose Crystal City, Va., as the site of its other new headquarters and has promised to bring at least 25,000 jobs there as well. In addition it is building an operations center with 5,000 employees in Nashville, Tenn.

Stephen Moret, president and chief executive of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, said Amazon told Virginia officials to expect the same breakdown for the company's Northern Virginia headquarters. "They've said from the beginning they expected it to be about 50-50," Mr. Moret said.

The selections capped a yearlong search for a site to build its new headquarters, one that sparked a national competition among cities, with some offering enormous subsidies to attract the company. Initially, Amazon had planned to build one new headquarters with 50,000 employees. But as the search drew to a close, it decided to split the headquarters into two locations, reasoning that it could tap into more tech talent.

A spokesman for Amazon did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

During the process, Amazon didn't publicly provide a breakdown on the type of jobs that would be created. In its initial documents to cities laying out its requirements, the company said there would be multiple job categories including software development engineers as well as legal, accounting, and administrative jobs. It said the breakdown of job categories would be subject to change.

"The tech industry has a full spectrum, and this HQ would include everyone from the C-suite to administrative to custodial to coders and the like," said Nate Bliss, the senior vice president for development at the EDC, who presented the HQ2 plan at the meeting.

The city officials made the presentation to a local community board in Queens. The community board, which is made up of residents in Long Island City and surrounding neighborhoods, has some oversight over land-use issues and can provide input into city decision-making. The meeting was the first since Amazon's announcement.

The city officials said details on the jobs at the site had not been completed. They noted Amazon's commitment to paying its workers a minimum of $15 an hour, which will become the minimum wage in New York City by the end of the year.

There are still unknowns around the exact types of jobs Amazon will bring to its Queens base, according to Robert Hess, the vice chairman for consulting at Newmark Knight Frank Global Corporate Services, who was involved in New York's bid for the company.

"Right now they're going through a complete national look at functions and where those functions should be," he said. "It's too early to land on these functions."

Although it is illegal to have a hiring quota around geography, Mayor Bill de Blasio has said he wanted to ensure local residents, particularly those living in nearby public housing developments, tapped into these opportunities. The city and state's deal with Amazon includes $15 million for job training, with $5 million coming from Amazon.

--Joshua Jamerson contributed to this article.

Write to Katie Honan at katie.honan@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 21, 2018 14:55 ET (19:55 GMT)

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