Amazon Offering to Pay 100% of College Tuition, Books, and Fees for 750,000 Hourly Workers in the US
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Online retailer Amazon will offer to pay 100% of the costs of college tuition, books, and fees for its more than 750,000 hourly employees in the U.S.
The incentive program will cover associate’s or bachelor’s degrees, as well as high school diplomas, GEDs, and English as a Second Language (ESL) proficiency certifications, according to a statement on Amazon’s website. The program will start in January and employees will be eligible after at least 90 days of employment.
Amazon joins several other major corporate employers like Target and Walmart offering such educational benefits in order to recruit and retain employees in a tight labor market. The e-commerce giant is even offering to pre-pay tuition and fees in advance, rather than requiring employees to pay those costs at first out of pocket and get reimbursed later, as several other companies have structured their programs. This “ensur[es] employees don’t need existing funds to start accessing the education options they want,” explained Amazon in their statement.
Amazon also announced several new or expanded in-house training and educational programs, and is continuing to offer sign-on bonuses for new hires — up to $3,000 in some markets — and starting pay of $17 per hour.
“It’s a very competitive labor market out there,” Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky said in response to the company’s second quarter earnings report in July, explaining that while they had “very good staffing levels,” they were also “spending a lot of money on signing and incentives.”
