Amazon said on Wednesday that it plans to hire 55,000 employees globally, with around 40,000 of those positions based in the United States. Amazon said that all available opportunities are for tech and corporate positions. Separately, the firm has hired hundreds of warehouse employees to pack and transport online orders.
During the epidemic, other companies lay off workers, while Amazon’s headcount grew as more people stayed at home and purchased toilet paper and food from the shopping site. It employed 500,000 workers in last year.
Amazon presently employs over 1.3 million people globally, making it the second-largest private employer in the United States after retail competitor Walmart, which is also expanding its workforce. The firm said on Wednesday that it will recruit 20,000 staff to process online orders and drive lifts at its Walmart and Sam’s Club warehouses.
Amazon, like Walmart before it, is under scrutiny for how it treats its employees. A unionization attempt at an Amazon facility in Alabama failed earlier this year, but other unions and supporters continue to target the company. The Teamsters, one of the country’s largest unions, said in June that it will increase its efforts to form a union of Amazon employees, claiming that the company abuses employees by giving them poor salaries, forcing them to work at high speeds, and providing zero job security.
