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April 17, 2020

Amazon hires 1,600 CT workers, will hire 1,400 more

Photo | Contributed An Amazon employee in the company's existing Windsor fulfillment center at 200 Old Iron Ore Road. The company plans to open a second distribution facility in Windsor on Kennedy Road by year-end 2021.
By Sean Teehan

Amazon hired some 1,600 workers in Connecticut as demand for the ubiquitous home shopping company during the COVID-19 pandemic, and will create an additional 1,400 Connecticut jobs.

The 1,600 hires in Connecticut Amazon already made is part of a 100,000-employee hiring-spree the company announced in March, and the 1,400 to-be-filled positions are part of an Amazon announcement last week that it will hire an additional 75,000 nationwide.

"We know many people have been economically impacted as jobs in areas like hospitality, restaurants, and travel are lost or furloughed as part of this crisis, and we welcome anyone out of work to join us at Amazon until their past employer can bring them back," Amazon said in a statement.

About 4,000 full-time Amazon employees were working in Connecticut before the coronavirus-related hiring spree. The company has at least five current operations or is leasing space in Newington, North Haven, Stratford, Wallingford and Windsor Locks.

The news comes the same week Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said the company is developing a COVID-19 test for employees.

Bezos in his annual letter to shareholders wrote that regular testing for every industry is needed to "both help keep people safe and help get the economy back up and running." He said for that to happen, society needs "vastly more testing capacity" than is currently available. He's assembled a team of Amazon employees from various units to create new tools to test for COVID-19.

Bezos said Amazon will begin testing "small numbers" of employees soon. 

"We are not sure how far we will get in the relevant time frame, but we think it's worth trying, and we stand ready to share anything we learn," he wrote.

A CNN report contributed to this story

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