Amazon’s Big Holiday Shopping Advantage: An In-House Shipping Network Swollen by Pandemic-Fueled Growth

When the economy sputtered with the coronavirus pandemic‘s spread this spring, unemployment surged as employers laid off workers by the thousands. Amazon took a different tack, hiring 400,000 workers to stow, sort, pick, pack and deliver goods from its warehouses across the country, and pushing its total employee count over 1.1 million people.