Amazon to hire 15,000 new employees in Canada as online shopping surges

Amazon Canada said Monday it will hire 15,000 new warehouse and delivery workers in communities across Canada this fall to support its ongoing expansion in the country .

Amazon also announced that it will increase the starting wage for its front-line hourly workers in Canada from the current level of around $16 per hour to between $17 and $21.65 per hour.

Amazon said existing employees will also receive an immediate additional pay of $1.60 to $2.20 per hour, which will apply to all full -time , part-time and new employees.

“We are growing very rapidly in the country,” Sumegha Kumar, Amazon Canada’s director of customer fulfillment operations, said in an interview. “We are scaling our business significantly and we want to continue to focus on our customers, so we obviously need to recruit and retain top talent.”

Amazon Canada currently has 25,000 full-time and part-time employees in 25 communities across five provinces. The company is growing rapidly due to the online shopping boom caused by the pandemic. eMarketer reports that Canada 's e-commerce sales grew by a staggering 75.0% last year, and this year, Canadian e-commerce sales will continue to grow, with an expected growth rate of 12% to 86.52 billion Canadian dollars (64.51 billion U.S. dollars).

Amazon now has 46 warehouse, logistics and delivery facilities in Canada, up from 30 in mid-2020 . More growth announcements are expected later this year, according to the company.

“Many of the largest retailers in the U.S. and Canada have been raising their minimum wages to retain employees and attract new ones as their businesses are booming, especially due to a surge in online shopping,” said Sal Guatieri, an economist at Bank of Montreal .

Don Drummond, an economist at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario , said the risk of contracting the virus on the job makes people less willing to work for low wages, so those employers have no choice but to raise wages.

Earlier this year, Amazon announced it would increase wages for new U.S. employees to $17 an hour as it plans to add 75,000 new employees in the country.

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