Amazon will pay college tuition fees for US staff
Tech giant Amazon has offered to pay $1.2bn in tuition fees for 750,000 eligible employees as staff shortages continue to bite.
In a statement published today, the company said that workers would be eligible for fully funded college tuition including costs for classes, books and fees. Employees who have worked at the company for as little as three months will be able to apply.
Amazon is now the largest job creator in the U.S., and we know that investing in free skills training for our teams can have a huge impact for hundreds of thousands of families across the country,” said Dave Clark, CEO of Worldwide Consumer at Amazon.
“We launched Career Choice almost 10 years ago to help remove the biggest barriers to continuing education—time and money—and we are now expanding it even further to pay full tuition and add several new fields of study.” He added.
Amazon staff will also be offered on the job training to help them take on skilled technician roles.
The move follows similar offers by US retail giants Walmart and Target who are also offering to fund education for workers in a bid to lure workers.
In July, Walmart said it would pay for the college tuition of 1.5m staff as part of a $1bn investment.
Likewise, this month Target announced a $200m investment fund to support staff through higher education at 40 partner institutions.
Reluctant workers in the UK and US have been put off taking jobs in customer facing sectors after successive lockdowns and Covid worries put livelihoods at risk during the pandemic.
By the end of July there were 10.9m job vacancies according to the US Bureau of Labour statistics.
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