Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) said Thursday that it will hire 75,000 logistics and fulfillment workers in North America at an average starting wage of $17 an hour.
Most of the hires will be at the Seattle-based company fulfillment locations and its burgeoning network of local delivery centers, which are expected to spring up across the continent as Amazon positions its final-mile delivery network as close to end customers as possible.
Amazon has 409 delivery stations in the U.S., 344 of which support package deliveries and the rest for heavy, bulky items that are typically non-conveyable, according to consultancy MWPVL International, which regularly tracks Amazon’s distribution network expansion. Amazon is slated to build 229 additional delivery stations, 193 of them for packages, based on current MWPVL data. Amazon has 16 delivery stations in Canada, with seven more on the drawing board, according to MWPVL data.
Hiring for the 75,000 positions is underway, and there is no fixed timetable for completing the process, said Rena Lunak, a company spokeswoman.
Amazon said it will offer many new hires a $1,000 signing bonus and will give an additional $100 to those who can prove they’ve been vaccinated for COVID-19. Amazon provides on-site vaccinations at more than 250 locations in the U.S. and Canada.
According to Amazon, the states with the most open positions are Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Washington and Wisconsin.