Amazon plans to recruit over 300,000 workers for holiday season, up 20% from 2025; check wages for seasonal workers

Amazon plans to recruit over 300,000 people for the upcoming holiday shopping season, a 20% increase from its hiring last year. The expansion makes the e-commerce giant an exception in a relatively subdued seasonal employment market, according to Bloomberg.

The hiring drive covers permanent, part-time and seasonal positions. Temporary employees will receive an average hourly wage of $20, the Seattle-headquartered company said in a blog post on Tuesday. Amazon is also looking to retain seasonal staff beyond the festive period by extending medical benefits to those who continue working in January for at least 30 hours a week.

Meanwhile, seasonal recruitment across the retail industry is expected to remain below last year's 450,000 jobs, potentially making it the weakest holiday hiring season since 2008, as per outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Major retailers such as Walmart Inc. and Target Corp. have once again chosen not to disclose their seasonal hiring targets, unlike the large-scale recruitment drives seen during the pandemic. Seasonal recruitment by logistics and warehousing companies is expected to remain largely unchanged from last year, according to estimates by Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

“Almost every hiring announcement we’ve seen in the last three years is smaller and more surgical than the pre-pandemic playbook,” said Andy Challenger, the firm's chief revenue officer.

Online spending by US consumers during November and December is projected to reach $275.1 billion, marking a 6.7% rise from 2025, according to Adobe Inc. Amazon accounts for nearly 40 cents of every dollar spent online, estimates from EMarketer Inc. show.

Meanwhile, United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS), which has been cutting back on package deliveries for Amazon to prioritise more profitable business segments, said earlier this month that it would recruit over 100,000 seasonal employees. The planned intake is broadly in line with its hiring levels in previous years.

Amazon on Tuesday announced plans to invest more than 16 billion euros ($18 billion) in Germany next year, with the funds earmarked for data centres and other infrastructure supporting the expansion of artificial intelligence, according to AFP.

The investment announcement was made at a government-hosted business summit in Berlin, offering a boost to Europe's largest economy as it seeks to attract fresh capital, particularly in advanced technology sectors.

Amazon Chief Global Affairs and Legal Officer David Zapolsky described Germany as an important market for the company, citing its innovation ecosystem and investment potential.

"Germany is a hub of innovation and one of the most attractive investment opportunities in Europe," Zapolsky said, adding that Amazon had invested more than 100 billion euros in the country since 2010.

German Economy Minister Katherina Reiche said the investment would "strengthen Germany's position in international technology competition and create value and jobs in the process".

Of the planned investment, nearly 5 billion euros will be allocated to expanding Amazon Web Services' cloud computing operations in the Frankfurt region, where demand for artificial intelligence services is increasing.

A portion of the funding will also support Amazon Leo, the company's satellite-based initiative aimed at delivering high-speed internet connectivity.

The company further plans to modernise its warehouses by introducing more robotics. Its streaming platform, Amazon Prime Video, is also preparing to produce a new slate of content in Germany, Amazon said.

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Garvit Bhirani is a journalist based in Gurugram. He is a Deputy Chief Content Producer at LiveMint, where he covers national and international news stories, focusing on accuracy and compelling storytelling for readers. <br><br> With a total of six years of experience in journalism, he has previously worked with Vaco Binary Semantics for Google, taking on the role of news curation lead, and reported from the field on health, education, and agriculture stories for 101reporters and News9. He has also served as a content editor for entertainment and news media organisations. <br><br> Garvit holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism and mass communication from Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University and Gurugram University, respectively. During college days, he joined India’s only non-profit student journalism network, where he anchored daily news updates and produced his own weekly show called ‘Data Fix’. <br><br> He was selected for the YES Foundation Media for Social Change Fellowship in Delhi, the Talking Data to the Fourth Pillar residential workshop, and the VOICE Fellowship in Pune. <br><br> He holds certificates in COVID-19-verification reporting, data journalism, food & agriculture, tech policy, media literacy and countering misinformation, and tackling election disinformation courses from Thomson Foundation, IndiaSpend, The Dialogue, US Mission in India, and AFP. <br><br> He can be reached on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/garvit-bhirani">LinkedIn</a> or on <a href="https://x.com/GarvitBhirani">@garvitbhirani</a> on X

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