Amazon.com Inc. recently announced that they intend to hire 100,000 associates for the 2015 holiday season. This number is a 25% increase over last year’s holiday hiring spree, when they brought on about 80,000 people.
Not all of the seasonal positions will be temporary. The Seattle-based online retailer reportedly plans to keep many of the new hires on as year-round employees after the holidays. “Following last year’s holiday season, tens of thousands of seasonal employees found regular, full-time roles with Amazon,” said Mike Roth, Amazon’s vice president of North America Operations. “We’re excited to grow our team by finding great talent through our seasonal hiring efforts in addition to creating new full-time jobs that offer comprehensive benefits starting on day one.”
According to a report from Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, a Chicago-based executive outplacement firm, holiday hiring for other retailers is likely to remain flat. The report suggests that the retail industry will continue to see a shift away from holiday hiring for customer-facing, in-store positions and a greater focus on hiring for warehouses and fulfillment centers to support the online shopping retail trend.
Still, Amazon stands out in comparison to other retailers when it comes to hiring for the 2015 season. Other major retailers will come close, but they won’t reach Amazon’s workforce numbers: Macy’s will hire about 85,000 people, for example, and Target plans to hire about 70,000.
The U.S. Department of Commerce recently reported retail statistics indicating that e-commerce channel sales jumped to $83.9 billion for the second quarter of 2015, which reflects a 14.1% increase over the same time last year. The National Retail Foundation predicts that this year’s overall holiday sales, including online transactions, will rise 3.7% over last year’s spending to reach about $630.5 billion.
Amazon already has more than 90,000 full-time employees across its 50+ fulfillment centers and 20 sorting centers.