US companies hiring to meet demand for essential items

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced thousands of US businesses to close and unemployment claims may hit a record of 2.5 million this week, but some companies are hiring as consumer demand swells for food and other essential items.

Dollar General said Monday that it is hiring 50,000 workers to meet the "heightened demand for household essentials''. The retailer said a "majority" of those jobs will be temporary. Dollar General has 143,000 employees working at nearly 17,000 US stores and 17 distribution centers.

Last week, competitor Dollar Tree, said it was hiring 25,000 workers.

CVS Health announced on Monday that it is looking to fill 50,000 full-time, part-time and temporary slots across the country. Positions include store associates, prescription delivery drivers, distribution center employees and member/customer service professionals. The company is also giving employee bonuses ranging from $150 to $500 to workers required to be at its facilities.

Along with the hiring announcements on Monday, General Electric said that its jet-engine division will lay off about 10 percent of its US workforce, or about 2,500 employees.

The division is GE's largest and most profitable. The company also said up to half of its maintenance and repair employees will be furloughed for three months. It didn't provide numbers. The unit makes and maintains engines for planes built Boeing and Airbus.

A US government report published last week showed that 281,000 Americans filed for their first week of unemployment benefits last week — a sudden 33 percent jump over the week before and the largest percentage increase since 1992.

And this week is expected to be much worse.

Goldman Sachs predicts that 2.25 million Americans will have filed for their first week of unemployment benefits. That would be the most ever.

The need for essential items – especially food -- caused Walmart, the country's top grocer and the world's largest retailer, to announce last week it will hire 15,000 new workers through the end of May. Walmart said the jobs are temporary but many would convert to permanent roles.

"We're currently seeing strong demand in our stores," said Walmart president and CEO Doug McMillon in a statement.

Kroger , the nation's largest grocery chain, said it has hired 2,000 people because of coronavirus demand and has 10,000 job openings at warehouses, plants and stores.

Various forms of lockdowns across the US and the fear of contracting the coronavirus have led to skyrocketing demands for online goods and deliveries.

Walmart's chief rival Amazon said it plans to hire 100,000 workers to assist with online deliveries across the country. The company is also temporarily raising minimum pay to $17 an hour.

The pizza chain Dominos said it s planning to hire as many as 10,000 workers, including for delivery and making deliveries..

"Our corporate and franchise stores want to make sure they're not only feeding people but also providing opportunity to those looking for work at this time, especially those in the heavily-impacted restaurant industry," said Domino's CEO Richard Allison in a statement.

Bank of America Corp's consumer division has hired 1,700 people so far this month, a spokesman said on Friday, as the industry faces a surge in customer service demand due to the coronavirus outbreak.