Amazon Eyes Austin For Future Expansion

AUSTIN, TX — Amazon has quietly nearly tripled its local workforce over the last two years, a published report suggested on Wednesday. But the growth hasn't really been all that quiet.

In the past year, the company has more than doubled its local workforce with indications of further expansion in the works, the Austin American-Statesman reported. This is apart from the recent purchase by the e-commerce titan of locally based Whole Foods Market and a high-profile search for a second corporate headquarters that has cities throughout Texas in a tizzy while trying to land, the report indicated.

Since opening its Austin office in 2015, the company has expanded its local footprint from 350 employees last year to 900-plus currently, according to the report. Amazon officials told the newspaper they also have another 100 positions early.

In what was labeled as an "exclusive" report, three Statesman reporters detailed the local expansion, noting a corporate presence largely concentrated in the Domain in North Austin as the firm's hub — with some 250,000 square feet of space between two buildings at the mixed-use project between MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1) and Burnet Road.

But for anyone who's been paying attention to the local job listings, Amazon hasn't been exactly secretive in bolstering its Austin workforce. Even a cursory glance at the help wanted ads recently yielded a search to fill 175 openings in the Austin area, as posted on Amazon’s Austin job website, as Patch reported last year.

And two months ago, Amazon officials told the San Antonio Express-News — on the record, not for background and for full attribution as opposed to "quietly" — of plans to hire up to 1,000 workers at its various warehouses throughout South and Central Texas as it embarks on adding 50,000 workers to its distribution centers nationwide.

In the aforementioned expansion, hourly wages vary by position, but employees will receive a benefits package that includes health and disability insurance, retirement savings plans and company stock, the spokeswoman told the Express-News. An example of wages is at the company's facility in Schertz — a town within the San Antonio-New Braunfels metropolitan area — start at $12 an hour for a full-time warehouse associate, according to a job posting.

Another company inducement is the company's Career Choice program covering 95 percent of tuition costs for courses “related to in-demand fields, regardless of relevancy of the skills to jobs at Amazon,” the spokeswoman told the San Antonio newspaper.

Prospective employees can apply on the company’s website.

But while the Statesman report didn't break substantive new ground across the Amazon news landscape, it did offer a bit of intrigue: Documents obtained by the newspaper through the state's open records act unearthed emails among City of Austin officials, Amazon executives and Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce officials. The emails' subject matter: An expansion project dubbed "Project Rainforest," the newspaper tantalizingly reports is unrelated to that aforementioned headquarters that has cities agog in their quest.

(In interviews related to other matters, Austin Chamber of Commerce officials have confirmed they, too, are very much pursuing the headquarters Amazon is needing to build, a project that would be a major economic boon by any measure.)

After quoting from various cryptic emails related to the mysterious project, the Statesman concludes the project is a mystery. No one's talking about it, and it could be anything: "It’s uncertain what, if anything, will come of Project Rainforest," the newspaper account concludes.

Whatever this project with the clever wordplay alluding to its parent might be is anyone's guess. But the plot thickens, and Austin residents — those seeking work and others just rooting to further fuel the Austin economic engine (see below) — await company announcements on expansion with collective, bated breath.

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>>> Read the full story at Austin American-Statesman

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