Amazon plans to hire 250,000 workers in the U.S. for the 2024 holiday season
Amazon is aiming for 250,000 U.S. hires during the 2024 holiday season, matching its target from the prior year.
The numbers include full-time, part-time, and seasonal roles in the company’s fulfillment and transportation operations, said Sandy Gordon, an Amazon vice president responsible for the employee experience in its global operations group, in a post Thursday morning announcing the hiring plan.
Amazon recently announced a $1.50/hour increase in average base pay for U.S. hourly workers, to more than $22/hour. All seasonal workers will make at least $18/hour, and full-time seasonal workers will have access to health-care benefits starting on their first day on the job, according to the company.
The company says seasonal work is often a path to long-term employment, noting that seasonal employees who end up staying with Amazon see an average pay increase of 15% in their first three years of employment.
Other major retailers are also adding about as many seasonal employees as they did previously. For example, Target said Sept. 19 that it planned to hire 100,000 seasonal employees, the same number as it did in the past two years.
Overall, Amazon employed 1.54 million people as of June 2024, including corporate, tech, warehouse and transportation employees. That was up 5% year-over-year, but well below the company’s peak of more than 1.62 million employees two years ago.
Economists are offering a mixed outlook for the holidays across the retail sector.
Adobe, which tracks online spending through its retail analytics group, projected recently that U.S. seasonal online sales will increase 8.4% to more than $240 billion, about twice the growth rate of last year. However, the firm said the sales gains will come in part from heavy discounting, after a period of persistent inflation.
Also playing a role are changes in the labor market, and the rise of robotics.
“Transportation, shipping, and warehousing may not see the dramatic seasonal hiring spikes of previous years due to ongoing staffing stabilization and the increased use of automation,” said Andrew Challenger, senior vice president of outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., in a recent release.