Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy said the retail giant is planning to hire 55,000 people for corporate and technology roles globally in the coming months, Reuters reported.
That’s equal to more than a third of Google’s headcount as of June 30, and close to all of Facebook’s.
Andy Jassy, in his first press interview since he ascended to Amazon’s top post in July, said the company needed more firepower to keep up with demand in retail, the cloud and advertising, among other businesses.
He said the company’s new bet to launch satellites into orbit to widen broadband access, called Project Kuiper, would require a lot of new hires, too.
With Amazon’s job fair scheduled to begin Sept. 15, Andy Jassy hopes now is a good time for recruiting. “There are so many jobs during the pandemic that have been displaced or have been altered, and there are so many people who are thinking about different and new jobs,” said Jassy, who cited a U.S. survey from PwC that 65 percent of workers wanted a new gig.
The new hires would represent a 20 percent increase in Amazon’s tech and corporate staff, who currently number around 275,000 globally.
The positions Amazon is marketing include engineering, research science and robotics roles, postings that are largely new to the company rather than jobs others quit, it said.
Already the second-biggest private employer in the United States, Amazon brought on more than 500,000 people in 2020, largely in warehouse and delivery operations. That area has had significant turnover.
The company is investing heavily in building more warehouses and boosting pay to attract workers, in order to catch up to strong demand from shoppers seeking products delivered to their homes.
Jassy said Amazon has been very competitive on the compensation side. “We’ve led the way in the $15 minimum wage, and for some states on average that really, the starting salary is $17 an hour.”
Of the more than 55,000 jobs Jassy announced, over 40,000 will be in the United States, while others will be in countries such as India, Germany and Japan.
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