Amazon To Add 10,000 Jobs In Seattle Suburb

Amazon plans to add 10,000 permanent jobs to a suburb of the west coast US city of Seattle in the coming years in the growing tech behemoth's latest expansion near its headquarters, the company said Friday.

The jobs will be based in Bellevue, 10 miles (16 kilometers) east of Seattle, an Amazon spokesman said. The company did not specify how many of the jobs were entirely new to the US, but told AFP the figure included "a combination of new roles and teams from Seattle."

The move comes as upheaval from the coronavirus accelerates growth at Amazon, which recently reported a 40 percent rise in quarterly revenues to nearly $89 billion.

The jobs are on top of 15,000 new Bellevue positions announced in February.

Amazon has leased two million square feet (185,000 square meters) of additional office space in Bellevue, said a blog post from John Schoettler, Amazon's vice president of global real estate and facilities.

Amazon said in July it had added over 175,000 new jobs since March, with some 125,000 of these staffers brought into full-time roles.

Other tech giants such as Apple and Facebook have also reported strong results during the pandemic, along with big-box retailers such as Walmart, which have seen surging demand for e-commerce.

But numerous other companies are suffering, including retailers such as J.C. Penney and Nieman-Marcus, which have closed stores and filed to reorganize under the US bankruptcy code.