While Covid-19 ravaged the broader American economy, the largest U.S. employers added more jobs than they cut.
Overall, global employment rose by about 370,000 people among the 286 members of the S&P 500 that filed annual reports between July 1 and March 31, a Wall Street Journal analysis of securities filings shows.
Those gains masked wrenching changes and job losses for workers in many companies and industries. And the net gain in jobs for 2020 wouldn’t have happened without a single company: Amazon . com Inc.
The giant internet retailer added 500,000 workers around the world during the year—more than 400,000 of them in the U.S. Amazon created nearly as many jobs last year as the 136 other companies in the Journal analysis that added workers.
“By hiring that many people, we were not only able to deliver essential items for our customers during a critical time, but also provide an opportunity to those who lost their jobs or saw their hours cut because of Covid,” said Beth Galetti, Amazon’s senior vice president for human resources. “Amazon became an ‘employment beacon’ for hundreds of American communities.” Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama are voting on whether to unionize.
