Following a strike on Black Friday by Amazon workers in over 20 countries, the retail giant is preparing for the holiday season by hiring 50,000 more workers than in 2020 to meet consumer demand.
In 2019, the e-commerce platform hired 200,000 seasonal employees—the highest over the past decade—and this year they have onboarded 150,000 seasonal employees, an additional 50,000 compared to last year.
The mass hiring comes at a time when the U.S. labor market faces a crisis where millions of employees have quit their jobs, in part due to the fact that Amazon workers have an average starting pay of $18 per hour, sign-on bonuses up to $3,000 and an additional $3 per hour depending on shifts in many locations.
Seasonal employees will support Amazon’s permanent workers as the company works to grow revenue. Amazon generated $837,350 in revenue per minute for Q1 2021, and in 2020, Amazon generated $297,381 per employee from a workforce of 1.29 million employees.
