What Amazon Wants for Christmas: 100,000 Temps

The day before Thanksgiving, Nam Paan dressed for his job interview in a black hooded sweatshirt and matching sweatpants. The 24-year-old walked into a hotel near the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, and one hour and proof of ID later, he had a gig at an Amazon.com warehouse. The $12.35 an hour will help pay for his machining classes at a nearby technical college.

Paan is among the 100,000-plus people Amazon says it’s adding to its workforce during this holiday shopping season, roughly doubling its warehouse head count. Outposts such as the hotel serve as temporary recruiting centers for people willing to spend a few weeks a year moving items from shelves to boxes in grueling shifts. As Amazon’s overall business has grown—fourth-quarter revenue is expected to rise 23 percent this year, to $36 billion—so has its reliance on these feeder systems. The company used 80,000 seasonal workers last year, up from 70,000 in 2013 and 50,000 the year before.