Amazon will hire 250,000 seasonal workers this year to meet holiday demand, including 7,600 in Tennessee, according to several reports.
According to WVLT, 1,000 employees will be hired to work in Knoxville and Blount County.
“The holiday season is always a special time at Amazon and we’re excited to hire 250,000 additional people this year to help serve customers across the country,” said John Felton, Amazon’s senior vice president of Worldwide Operations, in a release. “Whether someone is looking for a short-term way to make extra money, or is hoping to take their first step toward a fulfilling and rewarding career at Amazon, there’s a role available for them.”
The company is touting increased wages, noting that customer fulfillment and transportation employees will average $20.50 per hour, which it said is a more than 50 percent increase over five years. Some locations will pay as much as $28 per hour for those positions.
“A fulfillment or transportation employee who starts with us today will see a 13% increase in pay over the next three years—likely more, including our annual wage investments—and that’s on top of offerings like prepaid college tuition with Career Choice and health care benefits from day one.”
According to the company, those Career Choice benefits include everything from pre-paid college tuition for associates, bachelor’s, and certificate roles to “industry certifications for in-demand roles in tech, healthcare, transportation, mechanical and industrial systems, and business & administration.”
Benefits include English courses, GED and high school diploma programs, and career coaching services.
“Students are able to attend their classes at one of more than 400 education partners around the world, including community colleges, local and national colleges, HBCUs, and other skills training providers,” according to the company.
Amazon touts the addition of more than $18 billion to Tennessee’s GDP thanks to investments in the state, along with the creation of 23,000 full and part-time jobs in the state as of January of this year and 43,0000 “indirect jobs supported on top of our direct hires in Tennessee.”
Amazon has seven fulfillment centers in the Volunteer State, with the newest one completed in Mt. Juliet in 2021.
In the same year, the company announced that it will build an eighth fulfillment center in the state, this one in Alcoa.
“Thank you very much, Amazon! We are very excited in Tennessee, especially in the midst of a pandemic, where we need hopeful signs of recovery,” Gov. Bill Lee (R) said at the time. “We all need to know that the future is bright for this state, and I am certainly excited for the future. This announcement today is an opportunity for us to be reminded of the hope that lies ahead for us.”
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on X / Twitter.
Photo “Amazon Workers” by Phil Murphy. CC BY-NC 2.0.
