Ottawa:Online retailer Amazon, with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on hand, announced Monday it will add 3,000 jobs in Vancouver, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of its Seattle headquarters.
The fields will include e-commerce technology, cloud computing, and machine learning, a statement said.
Trudeau joined executives and employees at the site of Amazon’s future 416,000 square foot (38,688 square meter) offices in downtown Vancouver’s old post office. The redevelopment is scheduled to open in 2022.
Combined with 1,000 new Amazon jobs announced in November, this will bring the company’s total employment across Canada to 9,000.
Its Canadian hiring spree, according to the prime minister, is “a testament to Canada’s highly-skilled, diverse workforce and tremendous potential as an innovation and tech hub.”
“Tech talent and investment are coming to our country in record numbers, and companies like Amazon are bringing even more energy, vision -– and thousands of good jobs -– to Canada,” he said.
The plan is unrelated to Amazon’s search for a second headquarters which attracted 238 bids from 43 US states, as well as from Washington and Puerto Rico, six Canadian provinces, and three Mexican states.
Toronto was the only Canadian city to make the shortlist, announced in January.
The second headquarters would bring 50,000 jobs to the winning city, said Amazon, which promised to spend US$5 billion on its construction.
AFP