By Spencer Soper and Matthew Boyle
Jeff Bezos scored a public-relations victory by giving his workers a raise, even drawing praise from Amazon.com Inc. scold Bernie Sanders. But at its root, the $15-an-hour minimum pay is an incentive for people to come work for Amazon — rather than Walmart or Target — as the retail industry gears up for the holiday shopping season amid historically low U.S. unemployment.
Amazon plans to hire 100,000 temporary warehouse workers this year to help fulfill orders during the gift-giving crush, when it needs people most and when the job market offers many other opportunities. The world’s biggest online retailer is on pace for another record year, with spending on its site projected to surge 28 percent to $394 billion in 2018, according to EMarketer Inc. To get there, Amazon has to lure a lot of people into its warehouses for 10-hour shifts plucking products from bins and packing boxes — work that may seem monotonous compared with customer-service jobs that involve interacting with people.
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