New York (AFP)

The American e-commerce giant Amazon announced on Tuesday that it wanted to recruit 125,000 people in the United States for its logistics, two weeks after indicating that it wanted to hire tens of thousands of employees worldwide for office positions.

The openings are full-time or part-time warehouse or transportation jobs, but Amazon has not given details on the timing of these hires.

The Seattle group said in a press release that positions in the order management and transportation departments would have a base hourly wage of $ 18, which could rise to as high as $ 22.50 in some. places.

The minimum wage for Amazon employees in the United States has been $ 15 per hour since 2018, more than double the federal minimum wage ($ 7.25).

Some positions will also offer a bonus of $ 3,000 upon hiring.

Full-time employees will have access to health insurance, a retirement savings plan, and the option of having the company paid for their university studies.

California, Florida, Pennsylvania and Texas are among the states where the greatest number of these new jobs will be available.

In early September, the company said it wanted to hire 55,000 people in the United States, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region in office positions (human resources, marketing, tech).

On Monday, Amazon also announced the upcoming recruitment of 15,000 employees in Canada during the fall and pledged to increase the hourly wages of so-called "front-line" employees (in charge of shipping, transport or transport. logistics).

The company organizes Wednesday in North America, then Thursday in Europe and Asia, a large job fair by videoconference.

This wave of hiring aims to respond to the explosion in the number of online orders, the group having already recruited more than 450,000 people on American soil since the start of the pandemic.

It also comes at a time when large-scale distribution is seeking to strengthen its workforce in preparation for the end-of-year celebrations.

At the end of 2020, Amazon had 1.3 million employees worldwide.

© 2021 AFP