Amazon is hiring 75,000 people for transportation jobs

Amazon announced today that it's hiring 75,000 people for order-fulfillment and transportation jobs. The positions have an average starting pay of more than $17 per hour and some come with sign-on bonuses of up to $1,000.

Plus, new employees who are already vaccinated for COVID-19 will get an extra $100.

The company said that the locations doing the most hiring include Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Washington, and Wisconsin.

Amazon has faced criticism about working conditions at its fulfillment centers, including safety complaints and strict targets, as well as its recent efforts to discourage unionization at an Alabama warehouse.

The Seattle-based retail titan has boomed during the pandemic, as throngs of people who weren't online shoppers turned to the internet to avoid shopping in physical stores and many others who already were Amazon fans ordered more merchandise than they previously did.

In its first-quarter earnings released late last month, Amazon reported that its net sales rose 44% from $75.5 billion in Q1 2020 to $108.5 billion in Q1 2021. It had $8.1 billion in profit in the first three months of 2021, up 220% from the same time the previous year.

Amazon stock was $3,175.57, up $23.64 or 0.75%, in early-morning trading.