Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) Hires More Employees to Avoid a Fiasco

As the customer demand will increase massively during the holiday season, Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is planning to increase its manpower for the occasion. The company has planned on taking on 80,000 new employees just for the holiday season. Last year, Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) had hired 70,000 employees during the same time. So this year, the number has increased by 14%. Out of the 70,000 seasonal workers, 10,000 were hired permanently.

The new workers will man the fulfillment centers, which are about 50 in number. By the end of the year, the company is planning to increase the number of its sorting centers to 15. In these centers, postal packages are sorted according to their ZIP code before being sent to the U.S. Postal Services. The sorting centers are very important for the operations of the company; they help Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) provide services such as delivery on Sunday. The sorting centers also help in the control of shipping logistics and provide a later cut-off time.

This announcement of recruiting new employees is not unique to Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN); many other retail companies have planned to hire a large number of seasonal employees for the biggest shopping season. Walmart Stores Inc. (NASDAQ:WMT) is planning to hire 60,000 seasonal workers – this is 10% more than the recruitment number last year. Target Corporation (NASDAQ:TGT) is going to gather 70,000 new recruits as well. The company will also assign more work hours to the full-time employees than it did in the previous years during shopping seasons. Gap Inc. (NASDAQ:The) also proclaimed their decision of hiring 63,000 new workers for the holidays. United Parcel Service Inc. (NASDAQ:UPS) will employ about 90,000 to 95,000 new workers in the season so that the higher number of online orders can be dealt with easily. The company faced a disaster last year when a lot of people were unable to get their packages on time.

20% of a retail company’s industrial sales in a year are comprised of the shopping in the holiday season. The statistics are based on the information gathered, and processed by National Retail Federation. The hiring pace at retail companies gives an idea of what you could expect in the holiday season.

In the last year, United Parcel Service Inc. (NASDAQ:UPS) was shocked to received very large number of online orders in the late shopping season. These orders mainly came in from Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) shoppers. So, both the companies are looking to avoid fiascos like this one in the future.

National Retail Federation expects sales in the holidays to increase by 4.1% in this year and amount to $616.9 billion. This is 0.1% higher than the sales last year. The largest increase in sales occurred in 2011, which was 4.8%. According to National Retail Federation, the shoppers will spend around $800 during the holidays. It is important to note that Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) currently has 132,600 employees, working part-time and full-time for the company. Let’s see what happens this year when the sales spike.