Amazon To Offer Jobs To Most Of Workers Hired In Pandemic

Of the 175,000 workers Amazon brought on board during the coronavirus pandemic, the eCommerce titan plans to keep over half of them, Reuters reported.

The company said they would offer permanent jobs to around 125,000 of the new pandemic hires, which equates to 70 percent. Those workers will get access to benefits like health care and retirement savings plans.

The other 50,000, Reuters wrote, would be offered seasonal jobs, with contracts up to 11 months.

Amazon, which hired on 100,000 workers in March for warehouse and delivery jobs and added another 50,000 in April, was one of the only companies to continue to see such robust growth during the pandemic times.

The unemployment rate hit 14.7 percent in April, the highest rate in decades, but Amazon’s delivery and its wide mass of product variety made it essential during times when people couldn’t access many areas of life they’d once taken for granted. In India, the eCommerce giant has been looking at expanding food delivery as it rolls out a new delivery platform to compete with the likes of Zomato and Swiggy.

And in the U.S., rumors abound that Amazon might reach a deal to buy bankrupt former department store staple JCPenney.

Amazon did not answer questions yet as to how much it would cost to hire all of those workers, and it did not say whether the idea is part of the $4 billion COVID-19 expenses it is anticipating to incur in the current quarter. Amazon said it usually generates $4 billion in profit in the second quarter, but this year said it planned to spend that much to keep employees safe.

Amazon employs 500,000 people in the U.S. and has a global count of 840,400.

Walmart has also ramped up hiring during the pandemic and has brought on 235,000 employees since mid-March. The retail giant said it had hired some of those workers permanently and planned to do so for even more in the coming months, according to The Wall Street Journal.