Amazon.com said it will be hiring 80,000 seasonal workers this year to work at its US distribution centers, as it embraces for the holiday season and attempts to improve shipping efficiency.
Amazon is trying to avoid the problems that happened last year in the holiday season, when shippers such as UPS were struggling with the sudden spike in online orders.
The figure is 14% more than the number of seasonal workers employed in 2013.
The company has 50 warehouses in the US, up from 40 last year, and by the end of the year it expects to have 15 package sorting centers.
The company has more than 132,600 full-time and part-time employees worldwide.
Last year, Amazon gave roughly 10,000 of the seasonal employees full-time positions. It says it will be hiring back “thousands” this year too.
Other major retailers are also increasing seasonal hiring, such as Macy’s Inc, and Kohl’s.
Macy’s said it will be hiring 86,000 new seasonal workers, a 3,000 increase compared to last year. Kohl said it will be adding about 67,000 new workers, a 17,000 increase compared to the year before.
To meet the upcoming surge in deliveries United Parcel Service Inc. will be adding between 90,000 and 95,000 seasonal workers.
The rate of seasonal hiring can be an indicator of expectations during the holiday shopping season, accounting for approximately one fifth of the industry’s annual sales, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF).
According to consensus analysts’ estimates, the increase in staffing could mean a 20% rise in fourth-quarter revenue for Amazon.
The NRF expects sales during the November and December period to rise by 4.1 percent to $616.9 billion – the biggest increase since 2011.