Amazon is making sure its employees have the necessary tools to further their education.
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According to a blog post on Amazon, the company announced that it would pay full college tuition for over 750,000 of its frontline employees. With this initiative, Amazon hopes to keep and attract employees to the company.
The company revealed that it expects to spend around $1.2 billion in the next four years on employees in the United States. The Career Choice program includes giving money for high school diplomas, a full ride to college, and English proficiency certifications.
Starting in January, Amazon said it would cover the cost of college tuition, fees, and textbooks for hourly employees after 90 days of employment.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, companies like Amazon struggled to find employees as the nation experienced labor shortages that left businesses struggling to fill jobs. Since announcing the education program, Amazon shared that it has seen an increase in applications.
“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. We launched Career Choice almost ten 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,” Dave Clark, CEO of Worldwide Consumer at Amazon said.
Employees can get funding for this program as long as they remain Amazon employees.
“All 750,000 U.S. hourly employees are eligible to participate in Career Choice 90 days after starting at Amazon. This makes all 400,000 employees who joined the company since the start of the pandemic eligible to access Amazon-funded education opportunities,” Amazon said.
Related
Earlier this month, Amazon revealed the company plans to hire 55,000 employees worldwide in the coming months.
As of July, Amazon already employed approximately 1.3 million people, per an NBC News report. The new hires would represent a 20 percent increase in its tech and corporate staff. Around 275,000 people in the company already work in those areas globally.
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