Amazon enters the ‘top 15’ of companies with the most employees in Spain
The Amazon earthquake continues to make itself felt in Spain. The technology giant strongly accelerates its hiring rate in the country to continue gaining positions and take advantage of the strong pull of electronic commerce and cloud computing, especially with the Covid-19 pandemic, which has caused changes in habits in the way of buying and working for individuals and companies. The company announced yesterday that it plans to create 3,000 permanent jobs in Spain this year, raising its permanent workforce to 15,000 workers.
The figure means doubling its workforce in the country in two years, since at the end of 2019 it had 7,000 employees in Spain, and raising it by 25% in just one year, because after creating 5,000 permanent jobs in 2020, it ended that year with a permanent workforce of 12,000 workers.
With the new data in hand, the company would enter the top 15 of the companies that have the most employees in Spain, according to the ranking prepared by Informa in 2019. A position where it would rub shoulders with Prosegur, Ferrovial Services or Iberia, which adds 16,000 employees including Iberia Express. In what it does seem that it can position itself at the head is in job creation, since so far this year no company has announced plans to hire as many permanent professionals in Spain as it does.
The new positions include, according to the company, all kinds of profiles and training levels, from warehouse positions to software developers and engineers, business managers, data scientists and machine learning, as well as cloud experts and architecture architects. solutions that work on Amazon Web Services (AWS).
More than 70% of jobs go to its logistics centers, the area where it has the most competitive advantage
According to report, between 70-75% of the 8,000 jobs that will be created in the last two years are for logistics; the rest, for the corporate part of business support, for their software development centers (the two they have in Madrid and Barcelona already have around 600 people), for the vendor support center they have in Barcelona (which has a staff of about 1,000 people) and for your business in the cloud (AWS).
The strong pull of hiring in Amazon began in 2018, although the company started its activity in the country in 2011, and said impulse is closely linked to the opening of logistics centers in Spain by the company. “In 2018 we had the San Fernando de Henares center in Madrid and the Prat de Llobregat center in Barcelona, and today we have more than 30, including logistics centers, logistics stations and distribution centers),” says a company spokesperson. The company has also announced the opening by mid-2022 of three data centers in Aragon, which will constitute its cloud region in Spain, and which will generate, according to the multinational, 1,300 full-time jobs.
“It is logical that Amazon hires professionals at this speed for all its ecommerce areas. The pandemic has shown that some win and others lose, and what is growing is electronic commerce and the maximum representative is Amazon”, says Fernando Aparicio, CEO of Amvos Digital. This ecommerce expert does not find it strange, moreover, that most of the contracts are destined for its logistics centers, since storage and distribution capacities are essential to offer a comprehensive solution for user satisfaction in their journey as a digital consumer. .
“This fact shows that they are investing in that critical part of electronic commerce, which is logistics, and that is where they show the most competitive advantage. There are the barriers to entry from Amazon to other competitors, and there is no one to cough them up. They are betting on consolidating an area where they really make a big difference to the rest, because companies like Aliexpress, for example, do not have logistics centers in Spain, so the only thing they do is increase their leadership”, continues Aparicio. According to E-Show Magazine, Amazon had a 15.7% share of the total e-commerce market in Spain in 2019, far behind Aliexpress and El Corte Ingles.
The reinforcement of Amazon’s workforce in Spain, where it claims to have invested more than 6,800 million since 2011 in infrastructure and facilities, shipments and transportation, salaries and benefits for employees, as well as other logistics expenses, is not exclusive.
The recruitment effort is enormous in the US and is replicated in most of the countries where it operates. At the end of 2021, Amazon Spain is expected to be the third subsidiary with the most permanent employees in Europe, after the United Kingdom (where they have 45,000 and will end this year with 55,000) and Germany, which will end 2021 with 28,000 workers on staff after growing by 5,000 jobs this year. France and Italy, for their part, will close the year with 14,500 and 12,500, after growing by 3,000 each.