New York: Amazon has announced that it will hire 150,000 temporary workers in the United States for the holiday season, a 50 percent increase over the 2020 holiday period.
Amazon is finding it difficult to hire enough employees, so it will raise hourly wages, offer bonuses, and benefits to new staff.
The average starting pay for seasonal workers will be $18 per hour - higher than Amazon's $15 minimum wage - along with sign-on bonuses up to $3,000 and $21 an hour for those working certain shifts in some locations.
Among the positions to be filled by Amazon for the holidays include picking, scanning and packing items at warehouses and loading boxes onto trucks.
Amazon reported record breaking sales during the pandemic, as the public spent more time at home and increased their online purchases.
Since the pandemic began in March 2020, Amazon has hired more than 450,000 workers in the United States.
Amazon employs a total of 950,000 U.S. workers.
And certainly, the biggest contributor to inflationary pressures that we're seeing in the business, Brian Olsavsky, Amazon's chief financial officer, said in July. Besides temporary workers, Amazon officials said the company planned to hire 125,000 permanent workers before the holidays.