Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced it is creating 80,000 seasonal positions across its U.S. network of fulfillment and sortation centers this holiday season in order to meet an increase in customer demand. Last year, Amazon converted thousands of seasonal employees into regular, full-time roles after the holidays, and expects to do the same this year.
"So far this year, we have converted more than 10,000 seasonal employees in the U.S. into regular, full-time roles and we're looking forward to converting thousands more across our growing network of fulfillment and sortation centers after this holiday season," said Mike Roth, Amazon's vice president of North America operations. "We're excited to be creating 80,000 seasonal jobs, thousands of which will lead to regular, full-time roles with benefits starting on day one and innovative programs like Career Choice for employees to further pursue their education."
Amazon now has more than 50 fulfillment centers in the U.S. and will have more than 15 sortation centers by the end of 2014. The new network of sortation centers is fueling a range of innovations like Sunday delivery, later cut-off ordering times for customers and the ability to control packages deeper into the delivery process.
For its regular, full-time fulfillment center positions, Amazon offers competitive hourly wages and a comprehensive benefits package, including healthcare, 401(k) and company stock awards.
Amazon also offers regular full-time employees innovative programs like Career Choice, where it will pre-pay up to 95 percent of tuition for courses related to in-demand fields, regardless of whether the skills are relevant to a career at Amazon. Since the program's launch, employees are pursuing degrees in game design and visual communications, nursing, IT programming and radiology, to name a few.
