Amazon will create over 100.000 new U.S. full-time jobs in the near future, according to a statement by the company.
Amazon's New US Jobs
According to The Wall Street Journal, Amazon.com Inc. has announced in a press release on Thursday, Jan. 12, that it plans to add within the next 18 months more than 100,000 full-time jobs in the United States. This would increase the company's domestic workforce with more than 55 percent. Amazon's decision is leveraging plans already in the works, in part to improve the company's contentious relationship with President-elect Donald Trump.
According to Geek Wire, by mid-2018 this growth of its workforce would push Amazon's U.S. workforce to more than 280,000 people. The company explained that the jobs will be available to people with all types of education, experience and skill levels and located all across the country. The positions opened will cater to those seeking on-the-job training and entry-level positions, as well as experienced specialists such engineers and software developers.
Amazon also said that the jobs will offer company stock, retirement saving plans, disability insurance, health insurance and highly-competitive pay. The company also said that these are full-time jobs that include extensive parental benefits and up to 20 weeks of paid leave.
The U.S. job market experiences a period of heightened scrutiny of U.S. corporate giants and domestic job growth and retention. In this context, company's unusual announcement comes as a surprise.
President-elect Donald Trump helped to convince manufacturer Carrier to keep around 1,000 jobs in the U.S., according to The New York Times. Trump also took credit for convincing wireless carrier Sprint, to preserve or create 5,000 jobs, according to Bloomberg. However, Amazon's new job creation plan overshadows all those others commitments.
Reasons For New Jobs Creation
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement released by the company that innovation is creating hundreds of thousands of American jobs. He added that these jobs are in company's fulfillment centers, customer service network and other facilities in local communities throughout the country, not just in its Seattle headquarters or in Silicon Valley. As Amazon will continue to invent in areas like machine learning, cloud technology, and advanced logistics and to open new fulfillment centers, the company will add more than 100,000 new full-time jobs to its existent workforce.
Following a New York Times article about the company's "bruising workplace" in 2015, Amazon tries to defend its culture and restore its reputation. The emphasis on full-time jobs with strong benefits could be better understood in this larger context.
Amazon is already one o the country's biggest employers and its rapid growth has transformed the Denny Triangle and the South Lake Union neighborhoods just outside the downtown Seattle. The company's rapid growth has contributed to related challenges in areas including housing and transportation, but it also helped to fuel the city's tech boom.
As of the end of the third quarter, Amazon employed more than 306,000 people worldwide. Over the past five years, its global workforce has increased more than six-fold. More than 9,000 Amazon employees have now participated in company's innovative "Career Choice" program that pre-pays 95 percent of tuition for degrees in high-demand occupations such as machine tool technologies, computer-aided design, aircraft mechanics, nursing, medical lab technologies and many other fields.
