Amazon to Add 8,700 Jobs in NJ

By Jim Pytell, Managing Editor On Sep 14, 2021

Amazon is once again increasing its presence in New Jersey, announcing today that it is creating more than 8,700 jobs in the Garden State, bringing its total number of employees in the state to more than 50,000. According to the e-commerce giant, these will be regular full-time and part-time positions in operations, and offer an average starting wage of more than $18 per hour.

The news comes as part of a larger announcement today in which the company said it is adding 125,000 jobs across the country, including numerous roles in fulfillment and transportation. These positions are separate from the corporate and technology jobs the company announced it is adding nationwide last month.

So far this year, Amazon has opened more than 250 new fulfillment centers, sortation centers, regional air hubs, and delivery stations in the US, and will open more than 100 new buildings this month alone. Additionally, since the beginning of the pandemic, the company has hired more than 450,000 people across the country.

The full-time positions Amazon is adding offer comprehensive benefits, including health, vision, and dental insurance, a 401(k) with a 50% company match, up to 20 weeks paid parental leave, and Amazon’s Career Choice program, in which the company will pay full college tuition for its front-line employees as part of a $1.2 billion investment to expand education and skills training for its US workforce.

“These are really good jobs – they pay well and there are good benefits – but these upskilling opportunities are a big piece of it,” Paul Misener, vice president for global innovation policy and communications at Amazon, told New Jersey Business. “We recognize that our employees often want to pursue careers beyond Amazon, and we want to help them develop skills [at Amazon] that they can use wherever their careers take them.”

Last year, Amazon announced it will invest more than $700 million to provide upskilling training programs to more than 100,000 of its employees. The programs will provide employees opportunities to get trained at their place of work in high-demand areas like medicine, cloud computing, and machine learning.

Misener said the company has also made it a point to make certain upskilling opportunities, such as Career Choice, available to nearly all of its frontline employees after just 90 days with the company.

“As we have been adding employees, we’ve recognized that we need to make these programs available to them too, and not just to those who’ve been with us for longer periods of time,” Misener added.

He explained that while Amazon is well documented as being innovative around technology, the company is also innovative around other parts of its business, including taking care of its workforce.

“I view programs like Career Choice as one of our proudest innovations,” Misener said. “I would like to have our company thought of as being innovative, not just for customers, but also for employees.”

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