Amazon hires over 800 in Sacramento area as coronavirus causes demand to spike
Amazon has hired more than 800 employees in the Sacramento region in less than a month, part of a nationwide hiring surge as demand for online orders has risen sharply due to the coronavirus pandemic.
There are still many openings in the region and about 2,500 active job listings by Amazon across California, the Sacramento Business Journal first reported earlier this week.
The e-commerce company on March 16 announced it was looking to fill 100,000 total full- and part-time jobs across the United States, and increased the base pay for many of those jobs from its existing minimum wage of $15 to $17 per hour, temporarily, through the end of April.
Amazon had hired about 80,000 nationwide as of earlier this week, more than 10,000 of them in California, and over 800 of those near Sacramento, spokeswoman Brittany Parmley confirmed to The Sacramento Bee via email. The company has hired more than 5,500 employees in Southern California, 2,500 in Northern California and 1,500 more across the Central Valley, she said.
Many of the recent, nationwide hires came from workers who had lost their jobs in COVID-19-related layoffs and “come from a variety of fields and life situations,” Parmley wrote.
Wages can be as high as $18.70 an hour in the Sacramento area for warehouse and fulfillment center positions with no prior work experience required, according to the Amazon Delivers website. Interested applicants do not even need a résumé, and there’s urgency in the hiring process: “Start as soon as 7 days,” the webpage says.
Parmley added that benefits “start on Day 1 for all associates (which has always been the case at Amazon).”
Amazon received criticism last month after warehouse employees in Sacramento and elsewhere complained the company used social distancing guidelines requiring only three, rather than six, feet of distance between workers, the latter figure being the one that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended to curb spread of the coronavirus. An Amazon spokesperson on March 23 said the company had switched to the more stringent, 6-foot guideline.
Job openings remain available in Sacramento, Vacaville and West Sacramento, according to Amazon’s jobs webpage.
