Amazon promises to put 100,000 Americans to work by mid-2018

Move over Alibaba — Amazon has a new jobs plan too, one with more details and a more immediate window of opportunity.



Just days after Alibaba said it planned to create one million jobs in the U.S. during the next five years (without giving any specifics), Amazon said it would create 100,000 full-time, full-benefit jobs in the U.S. during the next 18 months, or by mid-2018. The new jobs would bring Amazon’s total workforce to more than 280,000. (By comparison, Walmart currently employs 1.5 million people across the United States).



The new Amazon positions will run the gamut from engineers and software developers to those seeking entry-level positions and on-the-job training. Many of the jobs will be in new fulfillment centers that are currently under construction, including ones in California, Florida, New Jersey and Texas.



Additional positions would be in the areas of cloud technology, logistics and machine learning,



“Innovation is one of our guiding principles at Amazon, and it’s created hundreds of thousands of American jobs, not just in our Seattle headquarters or in Silicon Valley, but also in our customer service network, fulfillment centers and other facilities in local communities throughout the country,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO.



In addition, Amazon businesses like Marketplace and Amazon Flex, will continue to create hundreds of thousands of jobs for people across the U.S. who want the flexibility to start their own business, work part-time or set their own schedule.



As part of its new hiring spree, the Internet giant Amazon committed to hiring 10,000 active duty service members, veterans and military spouses not employed by Amazon in cloud computing through its AWS Educate program. Amazon already employs over 10,000 military veterans, and last year pledged to hire and train an additional 25,000 veterans and military spouses over the next five years.