Amazon said they plan to hire more than 300,000 workers for the U.S. holiday season, its first increase in seasonal hiring in three years. https://t.co/9JFc7J4MlN
— ABC News (@ABC) October 21, 2026
Amazon plans to hire more than 300,000 workers across its U.S. operations for the 2026 holiday season, a 20% jump from the 250,000 it brought on in each of the prior three years and its first increase for the period since 2023.
The roles cover seasonal, part-time, and full-time positions in fulfillment, transportation, and delivery. Seasonal workers average about $20 an hour. Full-time core operations staff start at a $20 minimum, with average pay near $24. Starting January 1, 2027, seasonal employees who work at least 30 hours a week get the same healthcare benefits as regular full-time staff, with plan options beginning at $5 a week and $5 copays.
Amazon will post openings weekly from October through December. Applicants can check amazon.com/localjobs or text NEWJOB to 31432. Texas is expected to account for a large share, roughly 26,500 positions, including more than 11,000 in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
The hiring stands out because most other large retailers are holding back. Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas expects total U.S. seasonal retail hiring to stay below last year’s roughly 450,000 jobs, which would mark the lowest level since 2008. Walmart and Target have again declined to announce big seasonal numbers. UPS is adding about 100,000.
I’m rooting for the robots! https://t.co/QJEQupjTEG
— Vince Langman (@LangmanVince) October 21, 2026
National Retail Federation forecasts put November-December retail sales above $1.01 trillion, up more than 4% from 2025. Online holiday spending is projected around $275 billion, up nearly 7%. Amazon captures roughly 40% of U.S. e-commerce sales.
The company employed about 1.576 million full- and part-time workers worldwide at the end of 2025, with the large majority in the United States. Most of the new holiday roles are operations jobs, not corporate.
At the same time, Amazon has continued trimming corporate staff. Earlier this month it cut fewer than 1,000 white-collar roles, mainly in its Stores division (customer service, marketplace support, and related retail teams). Those reductions follow roughly 30,000 corporate cuts announced in late 2025 and January 2026.
$20 AN HOUR FOR THE HOLIDAY RUSH. $142,800 FOR THE H-1B VISA HIRES.
Amazon cut about 30,000 corporate jobs since October 2025. In the same months it filed over 20,000 H-1B applications. This doesn’t even take into account L-1, H4-EAD and all working student visas (where they also rank number 1 in the country).
Now it is hiring 300,000 for the holidays. Seasonal workers average $20 an hour. Their job is gone in January.
The median wage on Amazon’s H-1B filings is $142,800. The top title is Software Developers.
Those are the jobs apparently not available to Americans. Seasonal delivery drivers, though? Come on down!
— LayoffHedge (@LayoffAI) October 21, 2026
Physical expansion of the U.S. logistics network continues. In Texas, Amazon is moving ahead with a roughly 1.2 million-square-foot distribution center in Terrell (about $98 million, targeted completion 2027) and a smaller robotics-equipped sorting facility in Georgetown. It recently opened a $550 million, 3.1 million-square-foot fulfillment center in Niagara, New York, hiring about 1,000 people. In Chicago it bought a $195 million multi-story warehouse for a same-day delivery center expected to open in late 2027 or early 2028.
🚨 JUST IN: Elon Musk announces he might launch a competitor to AMAZON after it blocked Grok Bot from placing any and all orders
“Maybe we should start a competitor to Amazon.” 👀
This would be HUGE.
We all know that if Elon decides to compete with Amazon, there would be no holding back. Never bet against Elon 🔥
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 15, 2026
Robotics manufacturing is also growing. Amazon is investing more than $100 million in a new Indiana facility expected to open by 2028 to build warehouse robots, plus additional robotics capacity in Texas. The company already deploys robots across hundreds of facilities and says they assist with the majority of customer orders.
On the cloud side, Amazon Web Services is building large data-center capacity across multiple states. Recent announcements include a $12 billion multi-site campus in Louisiana, additional Texas campuses, and a major Pennsylvania project tied to a former coal plant site. AWS has also pledged more than $1 billion over five years for education, training, and energy projects in communities that host its data centers. Some local pushback has appeared; Amazon recently agreed to drop a planned data-center project on a former George Washington University campus in Loudoun County, Virginia.
Amazon’s U.S. bet remains straightforward: keep expanding the warehouse and delivery network that handles the bulk of American online shopping while pouring capital into AI and cloud infrastructure. The holiday hiring is the visible piece of that strategy for the rest of 2026. Broader economic conditions, including consumer spending and energy costs for data centers, will determine how much of the planned growth sticks. For more on the jobs and spending numbers driving these decisions, see the latest election and economic tracking at dedicatedissues.com/election.
— The Whatfinger News Team: Ben and Beth, with Grok on edits
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