If You’re Looking for A Job This Holiday Season Try Amazon.com
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Business is brisk at Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN). Shares gapped sharply higher this morning on news that the company plans on adding an additional 70,000 U.S. full-time employees to its holiday workforce. The Seattle-based company says that the 40 percent hike over last year’s 50,000 seasonal hires is intended to meet and keep up with increased demand for products it sells online. Amazon offers seasonal employees healthcare benefits and wages (on average) of 94 percent of what year-round employees earn working in the company’s fulfillment centers. According to the press release, Amazon plans to convert thousands of the seasonal positions to fulltime, year round jobs.
So far this year, we have converted more than 7,000 temporary employees in the U.S. into full-time, regular roles and we’re looking forward to converting thousands more after this holiday season,” said Dave Clark, Amazon’s vice president of worldwide operations and customer service. “Each year, seasonal jobs lead to thousands of long-term, full-time roles in our sites—jobs that offer great pay, benefits starting on day one and the chance for employees to further their education through our Career Choice program.”
The world’s largest online retailer recently upped the ante in the tablet war by announcing that it is releasing two new versions of its highly popular Kindle this fall; the Kindle Fire HDX and a new Kindle Fire HD. The Kindle Fire HDX will come in two sizes. The 7-inch will retail for $229 and ship on 18 October. The 8.9-inch will retail for $379 and ship on 7 November. The tablets include a quad-core Snapdragon 800 2.2GHz processor, and up to 11 hours of battery life for mixed use. The Kindle Fire HD sells for $139, has a 7-inch screen and features a dual-core 1.5GHz processor. The HD will commence shipping on 7 October. Both tablets will feature a revolutionary new feature called Mayday. With a tap on the screen customers will be able to summon a support rep who can remotely draw on the Kindle’s screen, pointing out features and navigation. The rep can even take control of the Kindle and navigate for the user. The new support feature is gratis.
Other big retailers have also announced their holiday hiring quotas. Target (NYSE: TGT) also plans to add an additional 70,000 workers, down from 88,000 last year. J.C. Penney (NYSE: JCP) says it will hire 35,000 employees to deal with the holiday rush. This number is in line with last year’s hires. GameStop (NYSE: GME) will add 17,000 temporary employees. Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) will hire 55,000, about 10 percent more than last year.
Disclosure: The author has no position in the stocks mentioned in this article, and does not intend to initiate any position in the next 72 hours.
