Amazon offering £3,000 bonuses in Christmas recruitment drive

Online shopping giant Amazon is offering one-time payments of up to £3,000 in an effort to encourage employees to work for them.

The retailer is looking to hire 20,000 people for positions across the UK in preparation for Christmas and the festive season.

The news comes as fears of labor shortages have prompted other firms to warn there could be problems by Christmas.

Amazon began offering a £1,000 sign-on bonus to recruit permanent employees in parts of the UK in early August.

The amount offered by the firm as an initial bonus depends on where the job is located in the UK.

The company’s latest recruitment of employees includes a £3,000 bonus for full-time employees at sites like your Exeter warehouse.

In Peterborough, a sign-up bonus of £1,500 is being offered to both new temporary and new permanent workers.

The Food and Drink Federation warned that the incentives could deal a “knock-out blow” to small firms struggling to hire seasonal workers and drive up prices.

“The British don’t have a huge stockpile of workers just waiting to fight. It’s incredibly difficult to get Christmas workers in many areas,” explained Chief Executive Ian Wright Guardian.

Pay for Amazon temporary roles starts at a minimum of £10 per hour. This can increase to £11.10 in some parts of the UK.

In recent months, labor shortages in many sectors have resulted in huge disruptions, delays in deliveries and waste.

according to the latest data From the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the number of job vacancies reached 1.1 million between July and September 2021. This is the highest level since records began in 2001.

According to the ONS, the sectors with the highest growth in available jobs are the retail sector and motor mechanics.

The increase in jobs is believed to be linked to some foreign workers leaving the UK during the pandemic and also after Brexit.

Also the furlough scheme, which ends this month, has also kept some employees out of the job market.

In the United States, Amazon said on Monday it intends to hire 150,000 seasonal workers during the holiday period to help increase expected orders during the year-end shopping period.