AMZN Amazon.com Inc

By Ben Otto 

Amazon.com Inc. plans to hire 100,000 additional employees in the U.S. and Canada, continuing its hiring spree during a jump in online shopping caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The e-commerce giant said Monday it would hire full- and part-time positions at dozens of locations, with the new jobs paying at least $15 an hour and including benefits and signing bonuses of as much as $1,000 in some cities. Hiring for the jobs has already begun.

The Seattle-based company also said it would open 100 operational buildings this month alone, including fulfillment centers, delivery stations, sorting centers and other sites. That will add to more than 75 others already opened this year in Canada and the U.S., it said.

The outsize expansion comes after Amazon experienced a wave of orders this year when coronavirus restrictions pushed millions more people toward online shopping. Retailers like Walmart Inc. and Target Corp. as well as e-commerce companies such as Instacart Inc. also saw immense growth online and hired hundreds of thousands of workers.

Amazon, the second-largest private employer in the U.S. behind Walmart, added 175,000 warehouse workers in March and April, 125,000 of whom it intends to keep permanently. Last week, it announced 33,000 vacancies for corporate and technology positions.

That stands in stark contrast to other companies and industries that are cutting tens of thousands of jobs. Amid a slump in passenger demand, U.S. airlines shed about 50,000 jobs in the first half of the year alone. Traditional retailers like J.C. Penney, Neiman Marcus Group Inc., J.Crew Group Inc. and others have filed for bankruptcy.

Amazon, which accounts for more than a third of online U.S. sales, has been profitable even during the pandemic. The company posted a record $88.9 billion in sales during its second quarter, and profit doubled year-over-year to $5.2 billion.

In the same quarter, it also spent more than $9 billion in capital projects. The company's nonretail segments, such as its cloud computing and advertising businesses, continue to see fast growth, creating further job opportunities.

Including temporary workers that the company describes as seasonal, Amazon has more than one million employees world-wide. Its total head count in the U.S. without seasonal employees exceeds 600,000, with more than 100,000 of those in the corporate ranks.

Amid the rising sales, the company's shares are up almost 70% this year. That has taken its market capitalization to around $1.6 trillion, behind only Apple.

Write to Ben Otto at ben.otto@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 14, 2020 07:25 ET (11:25 GMT)

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