An online retail giant plans to create more than 70,000 seasonal jobs nationwide to meet a growing customer demand around the holiday season.
The jobs will be in Amazon.com’s U.S. fulfillment centers and are expected to become regular full-time roles after the holidays. Seasonal employees earn on average 94 percent of Amazon fulfillment center employee starting wages. They are also eligible for health care benefits.
So far this year, more than 7,000 temporary roles have become full-time, regular roles, said Dave Clark, Amazon’s vice president of worldwide operations and customer service.
“Each year, seasonal jobs lead to thousands of long-term, full-time roles in our sites—jobs that offer great pay, benefits starting on day one and the chance for employees to further their education through our Career Choice program,” he said in a statement.
The Career Choice program pays 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 launched last summer, employees are pursuing degrees in various fields, including game design and visual communications, nursing, IT programming and radiology.
The company said regular, full-time fulfillment center positions are offered competitive hourly wages and a comprehensive benefits package, including healthcare, 401(k) and company stock awards.
Overall, Amazon said it has added 40,000-plus jobs in the U.S. since the worldwide financial crisis hit in September 2008.
