Amazon says it will hire 250,000 employees this holiday shopping season and 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 hires 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.
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 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.
Amazon shares fell almost 3% at 12:23 p.m. in New York.