x
Breaking News
More () »

Target, other retailers aim to hire thousands of seasonal employees

To get consumers' attention, retailers like Amazon and Target have offered holiday deals as early as October in the past few years and are doing the same this year.

NEW YORK — Amazon said on Tuesday that it will hire 250,000 full- and part-time workers for the holiday season, a 67% jump compared to last year.

Target announced separately it will add nearly 100,000 seasonal roles during the holidays, the same number as it did last year.

The announcement from the two companies follows news from Macy's Inc. on Monday that it will add more than 38,000 full- and part-time seasonal employees at its Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury stores across the country. That's a slight decline from the 41,000 the company planned to onboard in 2022.

Amazon noted more jobs are available because the company has opened over 50 new fulfillment centers, delivery stations and same-day delivery sites in the U.S. this year. The e-commerce giant also wrote in a blog post that it will invest $1.3 billion this year toward pay hikes for warehouse and transportation employees, raising the average pay for those roles from $19 to over $20.50 per hour.

“The holiday season is always a special time at Amazon and we’re excited to hire 250,000 additional people this year to help serve customers across the country,” John Felton, Amazon’s senior vice president of Worldwide Operations, said in the blog post.

To capture the eyes of consumers, retailers like Amazon and Target have been offering holiday deals as early as October in the past few years and are doing the same this year.

Consumer spending has been volatile this year after surging nearly 3% in January. Sales tumbled in February and March before recovering in the spring and summer. The Commerce Department said last week retail sales rose 0.6% in August, driven in part by a big rise in gas prices.

Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks spending across all payment forms including cash, said in a report on Tuesday that it expects U.S. retail sales, excluding automotives, to increase by 3.7% from November to late December, a decline from the 7.6% sales growth experienced last year. The accounting firm Deloitte said in its own report last week that it expects holiday sales to jump between 3.5% to 4.6%.

WATCH MORE ON KARE 11+

Download the free KARE 11+ app for Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV and other smart TV platforms to watch more from KARE 11 anytime! The KARE 11+ app includes live streams of all of KARE 11's newscasts. You'll also find on-demand replays of newscasts; the latest from KARE 11 Investigates, Breaking the News and the Land of 10,000 Stories; exclusive programs like Verify and HeartThreads; and Minnesota sports talk from our partners at Locked On Minnesota. 


Watch more local news:

Watch the latest local news from the Twin Cities and across Minnesota in our YouTube playlist:

Before You Leave, Check This Out