Amazon wants to hire 55,000 more people worldwide, 40,000 of them in the United States. The internet sales giant announced Wednesday that it is looking for people for various positions in technology and corporate positions.
While other companies cut staff during the pandemic, the opposite happened on Amazon: their payroll swelled at a time when millions of people were confined to their homes and had no choice but to buy products online. Last year alone, Amazon hired 500,000 people.
Amazon currently has 1.3 million employees worldwide, making it the second largest private employer in the United States after Walmart, which is also hiring more people, and on Wednesday announced the hiring of another 20,000 for its Walmart stores and Sam’s Club in order to dispatch shipments and manage forklifts.
As happened before at Walmart, Amazon is being criticized for its working conditions. The attempt to unionize Amazon workers failed in Alabama months ago, but activists promise to persevere in their efforts. The Teamsters, one of the largest unions in the United States, announced in June that it will intensify its efforts to unionize Amazon staff, accusing the company of paying poorly, imposing unfair labor demands and refusing to offer job security.
Amazon said Wednesday that hiring is responding to the rapid growth of its businesses, such as storing data in the cloud and sending satellites into space to make Internet service more accessible.
Seattle-based Amazon has pointed out that open locations in the United States are spread across the 220 locations the company has in the country.