Amazon pledges to hire 100,000 US veterans and military spouses by 2024

• Amazon said Tuesday it planned to hire more than 100,000 US veterans and military spouses by 2024.
• It already employs more than 40,000 veterans and military spouses across the company, it said.
• Amazon runs schemes to help veterans transition into private-sector roles, it said.

Amazon plans to hire more than 100,000 US veterans and military spouses by 2024, the tech giant announced Tuesday.

The company said that it currently employs more than 40,000 veterans and military spouses in the US. As of late March, the company had nearly 1.3 million total employees globally.

John Quintas, Amazon's director of global military affairs, said in a press release that the company ran training programs designed to help veterans transition into roles in the private sector, such as the Amazon Web Services military apprenticeships.

"We value the unique skills and experience that the military community brings - and our new hiring commitment will expand the impact that military members currently have on every single business across the company," Quintas said.

Amazon said that military veterans and spouses can take its training programs for free, which it said would allow them to learn new technical skills and move into higher-paying jobs.

Amazon has sped up hiring during the pandemic to cope with soaring demand for delivery, and its workforce grew by 51% between March 2020 and March 2021.

The company currently has more than 35,000 positions open across the US, though the country is currently in the grips of a huge labor shortage that's hitting industries from education and healthcare to hospitality and ride-hailing apps.

Amazon hired more than 350,000 workers from July to October - but many of these stayed with the company "just days or weeks," causing some executives to worry about running out of hirable employees in the US, according to a report from The New York Times.