Forget cars, the future is online: Amazon to create more than 100,000 new jobs

While Donald Trump founded most of his election success on sweet-talking the US rust-belt states, it looks like online retail may one day be providing more jobs than the car industry.

Already one of the country’s biggest employers, Amazon plans to grow its full-time US-based workforce from 180,000 in 2016 to over 280,000 by mid-2018.

It’s taken Amazon just five years to create over 150,000 jobs in the United States, growing its workforce there from 30,000 employees in 2011 to over 180,000 at the end of 2016. Now the company announced that it plans to create an additional 100,000 full-time, full-benefit jobs in the US over the next 18 months. 

These new job opportunities are said to be for people all across the country and with all types of experience, education and skill levels, from engineers and software developers to those seeking entry-level positions and on-the-job training. Many of the roles will be in new distribution centres that have been announced over the past several months and are currently under construction in Texas, California, Florida, New Jersey and many other states across the country.

In addition to direct job creation, Amazon businesses like Marketplace and Amazon Flex will continue to create hundreds of thousands of jobs for people across the US who want to start their own business.

“Innovation is one of our guiding principles at Amazon, and it’s created hundreds of thousands of American jobs. These jobs are not just in our Seattle headquarters or in Silicon Valley – they’re in our customer service network, DC and other facilities in local communities throughout the country,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. 

“We plan to add another 100,000 new Amazonians across the company over the next 18 months as we open new fulfilment centres, and continue to invent in areas like cloud technology, machine learning, and advanced logistics.”

Over 9,000 employees have now participated in Amazon’s “Career Choice” program that pre-pays 95% of tuition for degrees in high-demand occupations such as aircraft mechanics, computer-aided design, machine tool technologies, medical lab technologies, nursing, and many other fields.

Over 10,000 military veterans already work at Amazon and last year the company pledged to hire and train an additional 25,000 veterans and military spouses over the next five years.

Writen by: Nicolas Verbeeck

Nicolas was born in Belgium and became an expert in consuming excellent beers, chocolate and waffles. During the winter period you can find him on a hockey pitch and in summer he loves to go for a swim or a surf. In 2013 Nicolas was wondering what the beers, chocolate and waffles would taste like in Australia and never came back. One reason… the weather. Nicolas obtained a masters in International Politics and tries to use this background to produce excellent conferences at Akolade.