Dive Brief:
- Amazon is looking to hire 100,000 new part- and full-time workers in operations roles in the U.S. and Canada ahead of peak season, it announced Monday.
- The company says it will open 100 new operations facilities in September, including fulfillment centers, delivery stations, sortation centers and others. States with the most open positions include Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin.
- The 100,000 operations hires will be in addition to the 33,000 tech and corporate jobs the company announced last week and the 100,000 workers the company had hired as of mid-April to handle the booming order volume brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.
Dive Insight:
The early phases of the pandemic showed Amazon what happens when demand spikes above what a warehouse network can handle. The company struggled to manage incoming product and outgoing packages. Order fulfillment slowed, and Amazon temporarily barred non-essential items from coming to warehouses.
The solution, in part, was hiring. Amazon announced plans to hire 100,000 fulfillment workers in mid-March and by mid-April, it had done so. More square footage is another part of the fix. CFO Brian Olsavsky said the company would increase its square footage by 50% YoY by the end of 2020.
For Amazon's first-ever peak season in a pandemic, the company is focused on safety first, capacity second and shipment speed third, according to Olsavksy. Amazon aimed to hire 200,000 workers for peak season 2019 — the first with one-day Prime shipping — which puts its total hiring for the year not out of the normal realm, though with different timing.
The company also put restrictions, starting mid-August, on third-party sellers using Amazon's fulfillment service, to make sure only the most productive inventory is on the shelves.
Anecdotal evidence from CEOs suggests hiring is not as easy as companies might expect with an 8.4% unemployment rate in the U.S. Amazon is offering $1,000 signing bonuses in some cities, according to the announcement.
