Amazon is holding a giant job fair[1] Wednesday and plans to make thousands of job offers on the spot at nearly a dozen US warehouses.
Though it's common for Amazon[2] to ramp up its shipping center staff in August to prepare for holiday shopping, the magnitude of the hiring spree underscores Amazon's growth when traditional retailers are closing stores - and blaming Amazon for a shift to buying goods online.
Nearly 40,000 of the 50,000 packing, sorting and shipping jobs at Amazon will be full time. Most of them will count toward Amazon's previously announced goal of adding 100,000 full-time workers[3] by the middle of next year.
The bad news is that more people are likely to lose jobs in stores than get jobs in warehouses, said Anthony Carnevale, director of Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce.
On the flip side, Amazon's warehouse jobs provide "decent and competitive" wages and could help build skills.
"Interpersonal team work, problem solving, critical thinking, all that stuff goes on in these warehouses," Carnevale said. "They're serious entry-level jobs for a lot of young people, even those who are still making their way through school."
At one warehouse - Amazon calls them "fulfillment centers" - in Fall River, Massachusetts, the company hopes to hire more than 200 people Wednesday, adding to a workforce of about 1,500. Employees there focus on sorting, labeling and shipping what the company calls "non-sortable" items - big products such as shovels, surfboards, grills, car seats - and lots of giant diaper boxes. Other warehouses are focused on smaller products.
And while Amazon has attracted attention for deploying robots at some of its warehouses, experts said it could take a...