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Another day, another reminder that Amazon is taking over the world. The Seattle-based company is planning to spend $5 billion building a second headquarters in North America, and it’s soliciting suggestions for the location from any local economic development organization that wants to toss its city’s hat into the ring.
While an investment of this scale says a lot about Amazon’s ambitions — though, honestly, who wasn’t aware of Amazon’s ambitions? — it’s also going to create a lot of jobs. The new campus will be a “full equal” to Amazon’s Seattle HQ, a 33-building affair that serves as home base for over 40,000 of its 380,000 employees. Amazon says the second campus will eventually bring on another 50,000 full-time staffers.
Though that hiring spree will take place over the next 10 to 15 years, after construction has wrapped, it nonetheless stands in stark contrast to the current state of the overall retail business, which has suffered numerous bankruptcies and significant job losses this year. The Department of Labor’s most recent jobs report, published last Friday, shows that after cutting 1,900 jobs in July, retail added just 800 positions in August.