Amazon plans to hire 250,000 seasonal employees to staff its U.S. warehouses and fulfillment network for the holiday season.

That increase matches its national holiday hiring spree last year, though it falls short in Washington. Last year, Amazon hired 250,000 workers nationally to prepare for the holidays. The year before that, Amazon hired only 150,000 workers.

Of the 5,000 workers Amazon expects to hire in Washington, 4,000 will be in Seattle, Bellevue and Tacoma.

This year’s holiday hires can make an average of $18 per hour, Amazon said in its Thursday announcement.

Seasonal employees who stay with the company can see a 15% wage increase over their first three years, Amazon said Thursday. Nearly one-third of employees who take jobs at Amazon facilities during the holidays later return, the company added.

Amazon is staffing up and raising wages as it prepares for a “competitive” holiday season at a time when consumers are still cautious with their spending, analysts from Morgan Stanley said in a note to investors Thursday.

But, they said those challenges are “temporary” and are optimistic that Amazon has invested in low-price, essential items that will continue to drive sales.

Amazon said last month it would invest $2.2 billion in its 800,000-person warehouse workforce in order to bring average compensation to $29 per hour, part of a now-annual pay bump ahead of the holidays.

That raise includes a $22-per-hour base wage and compensation from other benefits, like health care and a 401(k) plan.

The Morgan Stanley analysts also said the roughly 7% wage increase for warehouse workers will balance out because Amazon has continued to lower the cost per customer order for the past few years — and analysts expect Amazon will continue to do so.

The hiring spree in its warehouses comes at a time when Amazon is“flattening” its corporate ranks and reducing the number of managers in its organization. Morgan Stanley analysts expect that could save anywhere from $2 billion to $3.6 billion next year.

In the second quarter of this year, the most recent financial data available, Amazon reported$13.5 billion in profit, driven largely by growth from Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud computing division. Sales from Amazon’s online store increased nearly 4% to $55 billion.

©2024 The Seattle Times. Visit seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.