Washington — Dave Clark, the CEO of Amazon’s Worldwide Consumer enterprise, mentioned Sunday that the “very tight” labor market poses a “challenge” for the world’s largest on-line retailer, regardless of hundreds of recent hires becoming a member of the corporate throughout the vacation season.
In an interview with “Face the Nation,” Clark mentioned Amazon has nonetheless had “great success” in latest hiring, with 45,000 new workers onboarded in the final week, however he famous that in some components of the nation, “particularly in metropolitan areas,” it has been tougher to fill positions.
Clark mentioned he’s listening to from many small companies in specific in regards to the challenges they face in hiring workers. Requested what he believes is the trigger for this problem, Clark mentioned staff are “looking at their lives so differently” as a result of COVID-19 pandemic.
- Transcript: Amazon’s Dave Clark on “Face the Nation”
“People have evaluated what kind of jobs do they want to have. Do they want to be in the food service business? Do they want to be in retail, or do they want to be in fulfillment? Do both people in the family want to work? So many things have changed for people during the course of the pandemic that it’s hard to say one particular thing,” Clark mentioned.
He mentioned Amazon has been in a position to climate a few of the labor challenges by boosting wages and providing incentives to new hires, together with signing bonuses as much as $3,000.
“We are hiring a lot of people and people continue to be attracted to the great offer we have in pay,” Clark mentioned. “It’s $18 on average and lots of hiring incentives that are kind of unprecedented, really, of these sorts of $3,000 sign-on bonuses, lots of extra hourly incentives.”
On the pandemic entrance, Amazon has not mandated the COVID-19 vaccine for its staff, however Clark mentioned the corporate has invested in lab gear to check workers and opened greater than 1,800 on-site vaccine clinics at their amenities.
“We do think vaccines are the way out of this pandemic and we continue to work with our teams to incentivize them and help them understand why it’s so important and get them vaccinated,” Clark mentioned.
Amazon’s consumer chief additionally expressed confidence that inflation was not impacting shoppers’ vacation spending, saying the corporate had “a record-breaking Black Friday” this 12 months.
“It was really interesting to see how customers are spending in this first post-vaccine holiday as we start to come back together,” Clark mentioned, itemizing departments similar to attire, house decor and toys the place prospects are spending their cash. “I don’t see inflation particularly impacting consumers this holiday season so far, and we’re very optimistic about what’s to come.”