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Advice & Opinion

Amazon wants 300,000 holiday workers. They will average $20 per hour.

Overtime, safety, and the right to talk pay apply to temps too. Amazon's day-one health coverage doesn't start until Jan. 1.

Amazon wants 300,000 holiday workers. They will average $20 per hour.
Stock photo. Photo by Arum Visuals on Unsplash

Amazon wants more than 300,000 people for the holidays. On Tuesday, Oct. 20, the company said it will fill seasonal, part-time and full-time jobs across its U.S. operations, with seasonal workers averaging $20 an hour. GeekWire reported that the number is up 20% from last year and the largest holiday target Amazon has ever set.

Amazon also announced that starting Jan. 1, 2027, seasonal employees who work at least 30 hours a week get health coverage, and those hired on or after that date get it from day one. Seasonal workers used to wait 90 days, which meant many holiday hires left before they ever qualified. The change skips this peak season. If you're hired now and still in a qualifying role on Jan. 1, your coverage starts that day. If you're gone by Christmas Eve, you get a thank-you and a box cutter's worth of memories.

The rest of the market is shrinking. Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the outplacement firm, expects about 450,000 seasonal retail jobs this quarter, down from 461,500 last year, which was already the smallest holiday gain since 2008. UPS plans to hire 100,000 seasonal workers, Reuters reported, fewer than last year.

So a lot of people are about to take a temporary job in a tight market. Here's what the law says you're owed, and what it doesn't.

"Seasonal" is not a magic word for "unpaid"

The federal minimum wage is still $7.25 an hour, and many states set it higher. Employers have to follow both, which in practice means the higher number. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the main federal wage law, a covered employer has to pay at least time and a half for hours over 40 in a workweek. A seasonal title doesn't change that. Each week also stands on its own: the law doesn't allow averaging a 55-hour week with a 25-hour week to dodge overtime.

One real exception: some seasonal amusement and recreational businesses, like a park or camp open no more than seven months a year, are exempt from federal minimum wage and overtime. A warehouse is not an amusement park, whatever it feels like at hour 11.

The security line problem

Here's an unpleasant fact for warehouse workers. In Integrity Staffing Solutions v. Busk (2014), a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal law doesn't require pay for time spent waiting in and going through a post-shift anti-theft screening. The workers in that case were temps packing orders in Amazon warehouses. The Court said the screening wasn't "integral and indispensable" to their actual job, meaning it wasn't a core part of the work they were hired to do.

Some states go further. California's Supreme Court held in 2020 that time spent waiting for and undergoing mandatory exit searches counts as paid "hours worked" under state law. Pennsylvania's Supreme Court reached the same result in 2021 in a case against Amazon. Elsewhere, ask your state labor department.

Keep your own receipts

Employers must record your daily and weekly hours. Keep your own log anyway: clock-in, clock-out, breaks, time in line, and screenshots of your schedule. A note on your phone is evidence. Your memory in March is a guess.

Temp agency? You may have two bosses

If a staffing agency placed you, both the agency and the company where you work can be responsible for you. On safety, OSHA treats them as joint employers that share responsibility, and says the host company must treat temps like any other worker.

Speak up, and say it together

You have the right to report hazards to OSHA. Federal law bars firing or punishing you for it, but a retaliation complaint under that section must be filed within 30 days. Don't sit on it.

You also have the right to talk with coworkers about pay, schedules and safety. The National Labor Relations Act protects that, and the NLRB says it applies whether or not you have a union. Rules banning wage talk are unlawful. Supervisors and a few other groups aren't covered.

When the season ends

Federal law doesn't require an immediate final paycheck; some states do. Whether you can collect unemployment after a seasonal job depends on your state, so file in the state where you worked as soon as the job ends and let them decide.

Is it a gig or a tryout?

Amazon says seasonal roles can lead to full-time jobs. Plenty of companies treat December as a long job interview. Ask, in writing, whether conversion is possible, what the criteria are, and when your assignment ends. Watch who gets kept and who gets cut. And remember that "at will" has more limits than employers admit. If the season starts winding down early, our guide to layoff warning signs applies to temps too.

Your first step: before your first shift, start an hours log and look up your state labor department's website. Both are free, and both work better in November than in February.

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