Amazon to Hire 250,000 Logistics Workers for Holidays, Boost Hourly Wages

Matt Day and Spencer Soper, Bloomberg News

Employees pack items in to boxes at the Amazon.com Inc. LCY3 fulfillment center in Dartford, UK, on Friday, July 7, 2023. Amazon launched Prime Day in 2015 to attract new subscribers who now pay $139 a year for shipping discounts, video streaming and other perks. , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Amazon.com Inc. plans to hire 250,000 logistics workers, suggesting the online retailer is bullish about what’s otherwise expected to be a humdrum holiday shopping season.

The recruits will include full-time, part-time and seasonal workers at hourly rates ranging from $17 to $28 per hour depending on location, the company said Tuesday in a blog post. Some new hires will be eligible for bonuses ranging from $1,000 to $3,000. Amazon also said it will boost average pay for logistics personnel to about $20.50 an hour as it seeks to recruit and retain workers amid a labor shortage.

The Seattle-based company typically ramps up hiring in the fall to ensure it has enough workers for the crucial holiday shopping season, beginning with an announcement touting pay bumps and staffing plans. Amazon last year said it would bring on 150,000 workers. In 2019, the company pledged to hire 200,000 seasonal employees.

Amazon’s announcement stood out since overall holiday hiring is expected to be the lowest since 2008, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which estimates retail employers will add 410,000 jobs in the fourth quarter. That’s in part because Amazon continues to benefit from consumers’ shift online. US e-commerce sales are expected to surge 9.3% this year to $1.14 trillion, faster than overall retail spending growth, according to Insider Intelligence.

Target Corp. on Tuesday announced plans to hire almost 100,000 seasonal workers, about the same as it did a year ago. Macy’s Inc. is targeting 38,000 recruits, 3,000 fewer than in 2022. The United States Postal Service, meanwhile, announced it would hire 10,000 seasonal workers, down from 28,000 a year earlier, because the agency has added more full-time workers to its ranks.

Amazon is the second-largest private employer in the US, behind Walmart Inc. The company employed 1.46 million people globally at the end of June. Most of those people work in the company’s massive logistics division, primarily in the warehouses that store and pack items.

Amazon has been roiled by labor unrest in recent years. The company is challenging an election in which more than 8,000 workers at a Staten Island, New York, warehouse won the right to be represented by a union. Similar efforts at other warehouses have failed, though organizing drives continue.

--With assistance from Brendan Case and Olivia Rockeman.

(Updated with holiday season sales expections.)