Amazon UK Recruitment Drive Slows After Rapid Pace of Pandemic

Amazon.com Inc. said it would create more than 4,000 new permanent jobs in the UK this year, the smallest number it’s announced in at least three years, despite planning to open two more fulfillment centers in the north of England.

The new roles will span corporate, technology, as well as delivery and fulfillment positions, some of which will be based at warehouses opening in Wakefield and Knowsley later this year, the Seattle-based firm said in a statement on Friday.

It marks a deceleration in Amazon’s publicized recruitment efforts in the UK. In 2020, it said it would create 7,000 new local positions; a year later, it announced the addition of 10,000 more. A spokesman for the company said that in 2021 it exceeded that figure by more than double.

But in April, Amazon told investors a pandemic-fueled hiring and warehouse-building binge was catching up to it as e-commerce sales growth inevitably slowed from the torrid pace of the coronavirus outbreak. Fuel and labor costs were already biting, and soaring inflation has only continued since. 

Still, the company said Friday that by the end of the year it would have 75,000 permanent employees in the UK, making it one of the nation’s biggest private sector employers.