In brief: Amazon plans to hire more than 300,000 US workers for the holidays, its biggest target on record.
Implications:
Hiring: You are competing with a bigger Amazon push for the same hourly workers this peak.
Pay: Amazon’s $20 seasonal average is the number applicants will hold your offer against.
Retention: From Jan 1, Amazon gives seasonal staff who work 30 hours a week health care right away, so keeping your peak crew into the new year gets harder.
The News
Amazon plans to hire more than 300,000 workers for seasonal, part-time and full-time roles across its US operations network this holiday season, the company said on Oct 20. The target is 20% above the 250,000 it set in each of the past three years, and a spokesperson tied part of the increase to new sites opening as Amazon expands its network.
Seasonal workers will earn an average of $20 an hour, up from more than $19 last year. Full-time operations employees start at no less than $20 an hour after a $1 raise Amazon announced in September, which the company valued at more than $1.5 billion. Average hourly pay across its operations workforce is nearly $24.
Amazon is also changing health care for seasonal staff. Starting Jan 1, seasonal employees who work at least 30 hours a week will be covered from their first day, with plans that start at $5 a week. Seasonal workers used to wait 90 days for coverage. The change doesn’t cover most of this peak, but holiday hires still in qualifying roles on Jan 1 get coverage that day.
Amazon will post new roles every week through December. The push comes as holiday volume is set to grow modestly: NRF’s 4.2% holiday sales forecast works out to about 2% more cartons.
Why It Matters
Amazon is adding peak workers while most of the industry cuts back, so it will make up a larger share of the hourly hiring for warehouse and delivery work this season.
Scale: Amazon’s 300,000 covers seasonal, part-time and full-time roles. For comparison, Challenger, Gray & Christmas expects US retailers to add about 450,000 seasonal jobs in Q4, 2.5% below last year, which was already the smallest seasonal gain since 2008.
Carriers: UPS plans to hire 100,000 seasonal workers, about 9% fewer than last year, as it runs more volume through automated buildings and handles less for Amazon.
After peak: Day-one health care gives Amazon’s holiday hires a reason to stay past Jan 1 instead of moving on when the season ends.
What It Costs
Matching Amazon’s seasonal average is a modest line on a peak budget. For example, a DC that pays 100 seasonal workers $19 an hour and moves them to $20 spends $1 more per worker per hour. Over 40-hour weeks for a 10-week peak, that adds about $40,000, by our math, before overtime and payroll taxes. Matching the health benefit from January would cost more, and Amazon hasn’t said what it pays per worker for it.
Peer Insights
Other large employers are hiring fewer people for peak and holding on to more of the ones they hire.
UPS: Says applicants can get a job offer in under seven minutes.
Michaels: Converted nearly half of last year’s in-store seasonal workers to regular roles.
What’s Next
Now through December: Amazon posts new seasonal roles every week.
Jan 1: Amazon’s day-one health coverage starts for seasonal staff working 30 or more hours a week.
