SEATTLE _ Amazon.com says it will hold a giant, multisite job fair on Aug. 2 to help fill some of the 50,000 jobs open across its U.S. network of fulfillment centers.
The e-commerce giant, based in Seattle, says that on the occasion it calls "Jobs Day," it will welcome applicants at 10 of its warehouses. Amazon says it will make "thousands" of job offers on the spot.
The move underscores the continued rapid growth of Amazon's fulfillment operations. The company has invested billions building new facilities to catch up with increasing customer demand for the products sold on its website and to keep its promises of ever-quicker delivery.
At the end of the first quarter, the company had 351,000 employees, a 43 percent jump from the previous year.
The hiring spree comes in the midst of a tightening U.S. job market, with the national unemployment rate at 4.4 percent in June.
Amazon says that most of the jobs available are full-time and entail picking, packing and shipping customer orders. Some 10,000 of the opportunities on offer are part-time roles at sortation centers, smaller facilities that sift through packages shipped from Amazon's warehouses and send them to local post offices.
Those who work more than 20 hours per week are eligible for benefits that are the same as those of Amazon's corporate employees and include health insurance, retirement savings and paid leave.
The fulfillment centers participating in the Jobs Day are located in Washington state, Maryland, Tennessee, Ohio, Massachusetts, Kentucky, Wisconsin, New Jersey and Illinois. They will be open to applicants between 8 a.m. and noon local time.
