Amazon seeks to hire nearly 7K seasonal workers in Nevada
Amazon is hiring nearly 7,000 seasonal workers in Nevada in anticipation of a busy holiday shopping season.
The online retail giant is expecting to hire about 6,800 employees throughout the state, including about 5,800 in Las Vegas, for a variety of positions, according to Ofori Agboka, vice president of global human resources.
Amazon is now accepting applications for stowers, stockers, pickers, delivery, shippers, quality control, safety and human resources-related roles — all potentially leading to part-time or full-time jobs, Agboka said.
Applicants will get a contingent job offer immediately, he said, and the jobs could last “well into January, if not February,” depending on customer demand. The company is hiring about 150,000 seasonal workers nationally, up from 100,000 last year and in addition to the 125,000 transportation fulfillment jobs it announced in September.
Retailers are bulking up their holiday staffing to keep up with a pandemic-fueled surge in demand for online goods and supplement strained supply chains, said Bryan Wachter, senior vice president for the Retail Association of Nevada.
“The digital transition was supposed to take years. It took two weeks in March of 2020,” he said.
The hiring spree is underway at a time when companies across the country complain they’re struggling to fill vacant positions. Retailers have tried bulking up their staff over the last six months to get a handle on the “new normal” e-commerce demand while also sufficiently staffing valuable in-store employees for the holidays, Wachter said.
He said the retail association expects open logistical warehouse support positions to outpace frontline retails like they did last year, when the association projected Nevada retailers would add 4,700 seasonal jobs. He added that the retail association will release its seasonal hiring estimate in early November. The 2019 estimate was 7,100 seasonal jobs.
This holiday season could look closer to the pre-pandemic normal than did last holiday season, Wachter said, citing COVID-19 vaccine availability, better coronavirus mitigation strategies and a higher confidence level for people that they can safely shop and take part in “those fun holiday activities that they always have.”
Retail sales totaled $625.4 billion in September, up 0.7 percent from August and 13.9 percent over September 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Sales have grown year-over-year each month since June 2020.
The National Retail Federation estimated similar seasonally adjusted 0.7 percent growth from August to September when excluding automobile dealers, gas stations and restaurants. The federation also estimated that September retail sales were up an unadjusted 11 percent from September 2020.
The supply chain needs more truck drivers, warehouse experts and dockworkers, Wachter said.
“Then we need folks that are trained to do these jobs to perhaps take more hours and a little bit of overtime so that we can get these backlogs worked through,” he said.
Contact Mike Shoro at mshoro@reviewjournal.com. Follow @mike_shoro on Twitter.
