Amazon To Invest $1.2 Bln To Pay Full College Tuition For Its Front-Line Employees

(RTTNews) - E-commerce behemoth Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), on Thursday announced plans to fully fund college tuition for over 750,000 of its frontline employees. This the latest effort by the company to improve employee benefits that will attract and retain employees in the current labor market.

The company plans to expand the education and skills training benefits it offers to its U.S. employees with a total investment of $1.2 billion by 2025. Through its popular Career Choice program, the company will fund full college tuition, as well as high school diplomas, GEDs, and English as a Second Language (ESL) proficiency certifications for its front-line employees. The new program is also accessible to even those who have been at the company for just three months.

"Amazon is now the largest job creator in the U.S., and we know that investing in free skills training for our teams can have a huge impact for hundreds of thousands of families across the country. We launched Career Choice almost ten years ago to help remove the biggest barriers to continuing education—time and money—and we are now expanding it even further to pay full tuition and add several new fields of study," said Dave Clark, CEO of Worldwide Consumer at Amazon.

Amazon's announcement follows similar decisions made by the Seattle-based retailer's rivals. In July, Walmart Inc. (WMT) announced that it would pay the costs of tuition and books for its hourly staffers. Last month, Target Corp. (TGT) said it would offer free undergraduate degrees to more than 340,000 employees at its U.S. stores.