Amazon has announced a staggering number of the seasonal employees brought on at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic will now transition to permanent roles.
In March, Amazon announced it would be hiring over 175,000 full-time and part-time positions across North America in response to the surge in demand from the pandemic. Those positions included over 6,500 new employees hired in Ohio.
On Thursday, Amazon announced that 125,00 of those who came on seasonally have the opportunity to transition to full-time roles. Over 6,000 of those transition opportunities will be offered in Ohio.
"As the long-term picture becomes more clear, we're providing the opportunity for 125,000 of those who came on with us seasonally to stay with Amazon and transition into a regular, full-time role beginning in June," the company announced in a post on their blog. "Some may choose to return to their previous job and others may choose to stay at Amazon in seasonal or part-time roles."
The new roles offered in Ohio will be specifically for customer fulfillment and last mile delivery. The new employees will fill a number of roles, including picking, packing and shipping customer orders and delivering packages from delivery stations.
"Regular, full-time roles at Amazon come with a comprehensive benefits package starting on day one, a minimum wage of at least $15 an hour, and access to training programs like Career Choice that make it easier to springboard into a different career at Amazon or other companies," the post continued. "We hope the option for so many people to stay on long-term at Amazon will help alleviate some of the ongoing burden of unemployment in communities across the U.S. as we all work together to fight through this crisis."
The addition of the new positions will see over 13,000 full-time employees working in Amazon facilities across the state in 2020.