Amazon, Inc. has confirmed that it is hiring a further 100,000 full and part-time employees across the US and Canada, mainly to fill sorting, packing, and shipping roles. In its announcement on September 14, the company said that this new wave of job openings is not part of its seasonal holiday hiring, and is instead related to the continuing growth of online shopping in North America. It is also planning to open another 100 operations buildings across the US and Canada later this month to deal with online orders.

The tech giant has been hiring at a tremendous rate since COVID-19 lockdowns began, mainly on the warehouse and delivery side of its operations: it already added some 175,000 such jobs earlier in the year, and in July, its total global workforce passed the one million mark. This number will almost certainly rise even higher toward the end of the year, when the holiday season arrives and it adds still more contingent openings to deal with the spike in gift shopping. Last year, Amazon's seasonal hiring hit 200,000.

Last week, Amazon also announced it was looking to add 33,000 corporate and technology roles within the next few months, mainly in the US but with some positions located in other countries where it has offices. Some of these roles are billed with a starting annual salary of US$150,000.

However, there also continues to be controversy around the company's labor practices, particularly in the warehouse and delivery operations that it so urgently needs manpower for. Workers have complained about a gruelling pace of work, unsafe working environments, and more recently, a lack of COVID-19 precautions in the warehouses.