Amazon.com Inc said on Thursday that it would hire more than 120,000 seasonal workers in the U.S. for Christmas, which will represent an increase of 20,000 positions compared to last year. Amazon's decision will open jobs in 27 states, which would be very beneficial for the economy and the fight against the rising unemployment rate in the United States.
Many Christmas Employees From 2015 Stayed
Also, it will keep most of its seasonal workers from 2015, being most of them employees that started on Christmas and continued working in the company after the holidays, which is something that is not very common with many U.S. companies.
"Last year alone, more than 14,000 seasonal employees stayed on in regular, full-time positions after the holidays and we expect to increase that number this year," Amazon's vice president of global customer fulfillment, Mike Roth, said in a statement according to CNET.
Traditional Retailers vs. Amazon
Although this is undeniably good news, Reuters reported that this incredible expansion could also represent a major threat to traditional U.S. retailers like Target Corp, Macy´s Inc and Kohl´s Corp, whose conventions consist of hiring just a few employees and keeping seasonal employment levels with no changes on Christmas.
The reason why so many traditional American retailers are struggling to survive is because it hasn't been able to adapt to the digital era and the rapidly changing customers that exist today.The biggest problems of these companies are the new consumers and the fact that e-commerce businesses can sell products at a lower price.
In order to overcome this adversity, traditional retailers would have to find a way to tackle the growth of online retailers by creating a lot of earnings offering the same products at better prices.
