Lowe's wants to hire up to 50,000 workers this spring
Lowe's said Thursday it wants to fill 50,000 full- and part-time positions this spring, with hiring managers at the home improvement chain set to start interviewing job candidates next week.
The retailer is looking for cashiers, stockers, drivers, supervisors and other workers, and Lowe's said that some applicants will be offered jobs on the spot. The company did not not disclose the typical hourly wages for those jobs. On-site interviews will begin at stores nationwide on May 4.
Lowe's said it hired 50,000 seasonal workers earlier this year and converted 90,000 workers into full-time employees in 2020. The retailer has roughly 300,000 employees at more than 2,200 stores in the U.S. and Canada.
The openings at Lowe's add to a nationwide hiring wave seen in recent months as pandemic restrictions eased and COVID-19 vaccines are becoming more widely available. Employers in the U.S. added 916,000 jobs in March, the best month of job gains since August, according to Labor Department data.
In another sign the U.S. is rebounding from the pandemic, economic growth in the first three months of the year hit an annual rate of 6.4%, the Commerce Department said on Thursday. That amounts to the biggest quarterly jump in gross domestic product since 2003.
Other major employers are also adding workers. Dollar General said earlier this month it wants to fill 20,000 openings. Taco Bell also plans to hire at least 5,000 people. Gas station chain Love's said last month it's hiring 2,000 workers. Amazon said it hired 3,000 workers in Boston earlier this year.
"As the economy reopens, the problems keeping people out of the labor force should ease," Brian Rose, an economist with investment bank UBS, wrote in a recent report. "Job growth should shift to sectors like leisure and hospitality where there are millions of available workers."
Widespread COVID-19 vaccinations, business reopenings, healthy job gains and a huge infusion of federal spending that includes $1,400 stimulus checks for millions of Americans should help sustain growth, economists said. For 2021, they expect the economy to expand close to 7%, which would mark the fastest calendar-year growth since 1984.
Although the economy is recovering, the nation's jobless rate of 6% remains higher than before the pandemic, with unemployment in February 2020 at only 3.5%. As of March, unemployment for Black Americans was even higher at 9.6%, according to labor data.