Amazon to Pay $500 Million in Holiday Bonuses

Amazon, the leading online retailer, announced it will pay more than $500 million to front-line employees this holiday season. U.S. Operations employees who work at the company from December 1 to December 31 will qualify for a bonus of $300 for full-time employees and $150 for part-time employees.

Combined with other holiday pay incentives, in this quarter alone Amazon says it is investing over $750 million in additional pay for its front-line hourly workforce, on top of the company’s $15 national minimum wage. This brings total spent on special bonuses and incentives for employees globally to over $2.5 billion in 2020, including a $500 million thank you bonus earlier this year.

Amazon has seen a huge surge in business this year due to Covid-19 and opened numerous warehouses around the country to offer faster delivery to customers.

Amazon has hired over 427,000 workers this year according to The New York Times which is larger than any U.S. company has ever added in a single year. Amazon now has 1.2 million employees and over 500,000 contractors that deliver packages to customers.

Shares in Amazon stock closed at $3,195.34 on a shortened Friday trading day. The company has a market capitalization of $1.6 trillion, trailing only Apple which has a nearly $2 trillion market cap.