Amazon Gears Up for Holiday Season, to Hire Seasonal Workers

Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN is gearing up to handle the 2019 holiday season rush.

Like every year, the company is planning to hire seasonal and temporary employees to handle the holiday season pressure in its unique way. Reportedly, it will hire about 200,000 seasonal workers this holiday season.

This Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company will be recruiting employees across the United States for its fulfillment and sorting facilities to pack boxes and make timely deliveries. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Last year, it had hired 100,000 seasonal workers in the United States across its network of customer fulfillment and delivery facilities. This time, the company will hire almost double the number of temporary workers it hired last year, indicating that it expects strong sales during this crucial season.

Amazon.com, Inc. Price and Consensus

Seasonal Hiring Spree

Amazon appears to be hiring the highest number of seasonal employees than its competitors. This massive employment plan underscores its confidence regarding seasonal sales.

Other rival retailers are also set to embrace the holiday season, as is evident from their latest hiring plans.

According to reports, Target TGT intends to appoint more than 130,000 seasonal workers to provide a great shopping experience to customers. Also, Kohl’s KSS has plans to hire about 90,000 seasonal employees, whereas Macy’s M will be employing additional holiday workforce of 80,000.

Notably, per the National Retail Federation (“NRF”), retailers are likely to hire 530,000-590,000 seasonal employees for the 2019 holiday season compared with 554,000 in 2018.

Bottom Line

The NRF predicts holiday retail sales during November and December to reach $727.9-$730.7 billion, indicating an increase of 3.8% and 4.2% (excluding automobiles, restaurants and gasoline), respectively, from 2018. Online and other non-store sales are expected to grow 11-14% from a year ago. Therefore, it appears that Amazon is set to take advantage of the situation.

Growth of the e-commerce industry with consumers increasingly buying things online is working in favor of the company. Product offerings, a superior user experience, bargains and customer feedback have helped the company build a strong position for itself in the fast-growing e-commerce market.

While big brands may build their own online stores over time, smaller players are far more dependent on Amazon as they don’t have the resources to invest in technology and fulfillment to get the kind of reach that Amazon has.

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