Amazon to create additional 4,000 jobs in the UK this year

Amazon revealed late last week that it is planning to add more than 4,000 new jobs in the United Kingdom, and the workers can apply for permanent positions. The American e-commerce retail company said that the hiring would start soon, and the aim is to reach the said number of new hires before the year ends.

Amazon’s announcement of new jobs came amid a wave of job layoffs in the tech industry. Some of the roles that the company is opening for applicants are its software development, engineering department, fulfillment centers, product management, sorting hubs, and delivery stations.

According to CNBC, the additional workers will be deployed to various regions across the U.K. Some of them may also be assigned in Knowsley in northern England or in Wakefield, where Amazon is opening two new fulfillment hubs. Once this latest hiring move is completed, the number of Amazon’s employees in Britain will balloon to more than 75,000.

“We are continuing to invest in talent right across the U.K.,” Amazon U.K.’s country manager, John Boumphrey, said in a statement. “People join us not just for the wide variety of roles, great pay and benefits, but for the career development opportunities we provide.”

Amazon’s hiring spree is a big contrast to other companies that have been announcing job cuts for weeks now. Many major firms have been reducing their workforce due to slow sales and rising costs. In fact, Microsoft, Robinhood, and Netflix have all recently laid off some of its workers for the said reasons.

BBC News further noted that this new job hiring spree came after Amazon created 25,000 jobs in the country last year. This was around the time when the pandemic bolstered the company’s sales due to the people’s shift to online shopping.

To better accommodate the demands, Amazon even built new warehouses and fulfillment centers last year, and this was in the U.K. alone. People have been doing their grocery shopping and deliveries online, so the company’s services have been in demand.

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