Amazon is hiring 100,000 seasonal workers to help it keep up with a surge in holiday orders

• Amazon announced Tuesday that it’s hiring 100,000 seasonal workers ahead of the holidays.
• The company said it’s looking for workers across experience and skill levels to help pack and ship holiday orders. 
• The new roles bring Amazon’s total hiring to more than 400,000 since March as it’s faced a rise in online orders amid the coronavirus pandemic. 
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Amazon is hiring 100,000 seasonal workers ahead of the holiday season.

The company announced on Tuesday that it’s looking for workers across experience and skill levels to help pack and ship holiday orders. Seasonal positions can be a temporary way to earn extra income during the holidays or can lead to a full-time position at the company, Amazon said. 

The company also said it has promoted 35,000 operations employees in 2020.

The holiday hiring spree is Amazon’s fifth big hiring push in 2020 alone. The company announced in September that it would 100,000 new workers to help manage a rise in online orders during the coronavirus pandemic. Prior to that hiring spree, Amazon added 100,000 new positions in March, 75,000 more in April, and an additional 33,000 in early September.

The latest announcement brings Amazon’s total hiring to over 400,000 since the beginning of the pandemic. 

Amazon typically hires a batch of seasonal workers to help it manage the busy holiday season: In 2019, the company added 200,000 new jobs, double the year prior, to help the company sort orders and make deliveries. 

This year, retailers like Walmart, Target, and Kohl's are also expected to hire thousands of seasonal workers to help keep up with a surge in ecommerce around the holidays. Walmart announced in September that it will add 20,000 ecommerce warehouse workers for the season, while Target is likely to add around 130,000 positions, in line with last year. Kohl's also said its seasonal hiring spree will be similar to 2019, when the company added 90,000 new workers.

This year's holiday shopping season will rely much more heavily on ecommerce than past years due to the pandemic, but experts warn that customers may face new hurdles. Shipping companies have warned that that they are already at capacity ahead of the holidays, a trend they're referring to as "shipageddon."

Beyond shipping issues, however, shoppers are likely to have a harder time finding the gifts they want as retailers scale back their inventory to avoid a glut of gifts after the holidays. Lower inventory may result in fewer last-minute deals for shoppers.