Ecommerce giant Amazon announced its plan to hire 55,000 people in business and technology positions worldwide in the coming months.
This was disclosed Wednesday by Amazon Chief Executive, Andy Jassy, during his first press interview with Reuters since rising to Amazon’s top position in July.
The number of people the company plans to hire equals more than a third of Google’s (GOOGL.O) workforce as of June 30, and nearly all of Facebook’s (FB.O) employees.
Jassy said the company needed more firepower to keep up with demand in retail, cloud and advertising, among others. He said the company’s new commitment to launch satellites into orbit to broaden broadband access, dubbed Project Kuiper, would also require many new hires.
With Amazon’s annual job fair kicking off on September 15, Jassy hopes now is a good time to recruit. “There are so many jobs during the pandemic that have moved or changed, and there are so many people who are thinking about different and new jobs,” said Jassy, citing a US survey from PwC that 65% of workers wanted a new gig. .
‘It’s part of what we think makes’Career Day“So topical and so useful,” he said. The new hires would represent a 20% increase in Amazon’s technical and business workforce, which currently numbers approximately 275,000 worldwide, the company said.
Amazon’s move, just the latest hiring wave it has embarked on, follows a period of heightened scrutiny of its labor practices and opposition by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Earlier this year, a failed attempt by some Alabama employees to organize showed Amazon’s taxing warehouse work and its aggressive stance against unions. In the wake of that battle, Jeff Bezos, the CEO who succeeded Jassy, said Amazon needed a better vision for employees.
When asked how he could change Amazon’s demanding work environment, Jassy said its strong customer focus and inventiveness formed the basis for improvements.
“Everyone within the company has the freedom – and actually the expectation – to critically look at how things can be improved and then come up with ways to make it better.”
The features Amazon is marketing include engineering, research science and robotics positions, posts that are largely new to the company rather than jobs that others are leaving, it said.
In a reopening of the US economy and a tightening labor market, some companies are struggling to fill vacancies and balance distance work with in-person work. It was unclear how many of the Amazon jobs — such as for competing engineers — have been open for some time.
Amazon, which previously touted an “office-oriented culture,” later reversed its view and allowed employees to spend just three days a week in person in the office starting next year.
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Amazon was already the second largest private employer in the United States, employing more than 500,000 people in 2020, primarily in warehouse and delivery operations. That area has had a significant turnover.
The company is investing heavily in building more warehouses and raising wages to attract workers to meet strong demand from shoppers for home delivery. Jassy said Amazon is “very competitive when it comes to compensation”. He said, “We’ve been leading the way on the $15 minimum wage,” and for some states that averages “the starting salary is actually $17 an hour.”
Of the more than 55,000 jobs Jassy has announced, more than 40,000 will be in the United States, while others will be in countries like India, Germany and Japan.
Amazon previously promised a major tech hiring binge in 2017 as it sought a location for its second headquarters. Officials in cities and states across North America bowed to the company for its jobs and taxpayer dollars.
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Arlington, Virginia, the winner of the “HQ2” contest that so far has a small share of the 25,000 rolls Amazon has promised him over a decade, currently has about 2,800 openings. The Amazon-growing town of Bellevue near its hometown of Seattle has another 2,000.
The career fair will be worldwide. That’s after Amazon saw 22,000 people from India, including outside the United States, tune in last year, Jassy said.
