Amazon Plans to Hire 250,000 Workers for the Holiday Season

For the next holiday season, Amazon announced on Tuesday that it will hire 250,000 full- and part-time employees, a 67% increase over the previous year.

During the holidays, Target will add almost 100,000 seasonal jobs, the same number as last year, according to a separate announcement. The two businesses’ statement comes after Macy’s Inc. revealed on Monday that it will be hiring more than 38,000 full- and part-time seasonal workers for its Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, and Bluemercury locations around the nation.

That represents a modest decrease from the 41,000 employees the corporation had hoped to hire in 2022.

Because Amazon opened more than 50 additional fulfillment centers, delivery hubs, and same-day delivery locations in the United States this year, the business said that more employment is now available.

The online retail behemoth also announced in a blog post that it would allocate $1.3 billion this year to pay raises for warehouse and transportation staff, bringing the average hourly wage for those positions from $19 to over $20.50. John Felton, senior vice president of worldwide operations at Amazon, wrote in a blog post, “The holiday season is always a special time at Amazon, and we’re excited to hire 250,000 additional people this year to help serve customers across the country.”

Retailers like Amazon and Target have been giving holiday specials as early as October for the previous several years, and they’re doing the same thing this year to attract customers.

Despite an increase of about 3% in January, consumer spending has remained erratic this year. Prior to improving in the spring and summer, sales declined in February and March.

The Commerce Department reported last week that a significant increase in gas prices contributed to a 0.6% increase in retail sales in August. In a survey released on Tuesday, Mastercard SpendingPulse, which monitors spending across all payment methods, including cash, predicted that U.S. retail sales, excluding automotives, would rise by 3.7% from late November to early December, down from the 7.6% sales growth seen in 2017. In its own report released last week, the accounting firm Deloitte predicted that holiday sales would increase by 3.5% to 4.6%.