Amazon plans to hire 250,000 workers for the holiday season. Target says it will add approximately 100,000

NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon said Tuesday it will hire 250,000 full- and part-time workers for the holiday season, a 67% jump from last year.

Target separately announced it will add nearly 100,000 seasonal roles over the holidays, the same amount it did last year.

The two companies’ announcement comes on the heels of news from Macy’s Inc. on Monday that it will add more than 38,000 full- and part-time seasonal employees at Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury stores across the country. This represents a slight decrease from the 41,000 the company planned to accommodate in 2022.

Amazon said more jobs will be available because the company has opened more than 50 new fulfillment centers, fulfillment stations and same-day delivery locations in the United States this year. The e-commerce giant also wrote in a blog post that it will invest $1.3 billion this year to increase wages for warehouse and transportation employees, raising the average wage for these roles from $19 to more than $20.50 per hour.

“The holiday season is always a special time at Amazon, and we are excited to hire an additional 250,000 people this year to help serve customers across the country,” John Felton, Amazon’s senior vice president of global operations, said in a blog post.

To capture consumers’ attention, retailers like Amazon and Target have been running holiday promotions as early as October for the past few years and are doing the same this year.

Consumer spending has been volatile this year after rising nearly 3% in January. Sales declined in February and March before rebounding in the spring and summer. The Commerce Department said last week that retail sales rose 0.6% in August, partly due to a spike in gas prices.

Mastercard said in a report Tuesday that it expects U.S. retail sales, excluding autos, to increase 3.7% from November to late December, a decline from the 7.4% sales growth the company recorded last year. Accounting firm Deloitte said in its own report last week that it expects holiday sales to jump by 3.5 to 4.6 percent.

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AP reporter Anne D’Innocenzio contributed to this report.