Amazon plans to hire 55,000 people for business and technology functions worldwide in the coming months, chief executive Andy Jassy told Reuters.
That equates to more than a third of Google’s workforce as of June 30 and close to all of Facebook’s.
Jassy, in his first press interview since he rose to Amazon’s top position in July, said the company needed more firepower to keep up with retail demand, the cloud and the advertising, among other companies. He said the company’s new commitment to launch satellites into orbit to expand broadband access, called Project Kuiper, would also require many new hires.
With Amazon’s annual job fair scheduled to begin Sept. 15, Jassy hopes now is a good time to hire. “There are so many jobs during the pandemic displaced or altered, and there are so many people who are thinking of different and new jobs,” said Jassy, who was quoted in a U.S. PwC survey as the 65th. % of workers wanted a new concert.
“It’s part of what we believe makes‘ Race Day ’so timely and so useful,” he said. The new hires would represent a 20% increase in Amazon’s technology and corporate staff, which currently totals about 275,000 worldwide, the company said.
Amazon’s move, just the last hiring period he undertook, follows a period of intense scrutiny of his work practices and the opposition of the International Teamsters Brotherhood. Earlier this year, a failed effort by some Alabama officials to organize showed Amazon’s tax warehouse work and its aggressive stance against unions. After the battle, Jeff Bezos, the CEO who succeeded Jassy, said Amazon needed better vision for employees.
Asked how Amazon’s demanding workplace culture might change, Jassy said her great focus on customers and her creativity shaped improvements.
“Everyone in the company has the freedom (and really the expectation) to look critically at how it can be better and then invent ways to improve it.”
Positions that Amazon markets include engineering, research science, and robotics positions, publications that are largely new to the company rather than jobs that leave others.
In a reopening of the US economy and a tightening of the labor market, some companies have struggled to fill vacancies and balance remote and face-to-face work. It wasn’t clear how many Amazon jobs, such as competitive engineering contracts, have been open in a long time.
Amazon, which previously promoted an “office-centric culture,” later marked its vision and offered workers the opportunity to spend three days a week in their offices in person starting next year.
Already the second largest private entrepreneur in the United States, Amazon attracted more than 500,000 people in 2020, mostly in warehouses and delivery operations. This area has had a significant turnover.
The company invests heavily in building more warehouses and raising wages to attract workers, in order to meet the strong demand from buyers looking for products delivered to their home. Jassy said Amazon has been “very competitive in terms of compensation.” He said, “We’ve led the $ 15 minimum wage,” and for some states, on average, “really, the starting wage is $ 17 an hour.”
Of the more than 55,000 jobs Jassy announced, more than 40,000 will be in the United States, while others will be in countries such as India, Germany and Japan.
Previously, Amazon promised a big tech deal in 2017, when it looked for a location for its second headquarters. City and state officials across North America asked the company for their jobs and tax dollars.
Arlington, Virginia, the winner of the “HQ2” contest that so far has a small fraction of the 25,000 papers Amazon has promised it over a decade, currently has about 2,800 openings. The city of Bellevue, where Amazon grows near its hometown, Seattle, has another 2,000.
The professional fair will be global. That was after Amazon saw 22,000 people tune in last year from India, among other places outside the United States, Jassy said.