SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) – Amazon frontline employees can get the full cost of their tuition as early as 90 days from their start date.

Amazon said more than 750,000 employees are eligible for funding, which includes the cost of books and fees in addition to courses.

The Career Choice program extends to high school diplomas, GEDs, and English as a Second Language (ESL) proficiency certifications.

The funding equates to an investment of $ 1.2 billion by 2025, Amazon said Thursday.

“We know that investing in free training for our teams can have a huge impact on hundreds of thousands of families across the country. We launched Career Choice almost a decade ago to help remove the biggest barriers to continuing education – time and money – and we’re now expanding it even further to pay for tuition and add more. new areas of study, ”said Dave Clark, CEO of Worldwide Consumer at Amazon.

The company said it also prepaid costs up front, rather than using its previous method of reimbursing employees after paying their tuition and fees on their own. Employees can get funding as long as they are Amazon workers.

“All 750,000 US hourly employees are eligible to participate in Career Choice 90 days after starting at Amazon. This makes the 400,000 employees who have joined the company since the start of the pandemic eligible to access training opportunities funded by Amazon, ”Amazon said.

The announcement follows similar pledges from Amazon competitors Walmart and Target.

Walmart said earlier this year that it will pay 100% of the employee’s tuition fees. This year, Target also launched a “Debt-Free Education Assistance Benefit” to pay for undergraduate and associate degrees, certificates, and other training costs for full-time and part-time employees.

Tuition fees are one way major employers are trying this year to keep the workers they have and attract even more who wouldn’t have applied otherwise.

Businesses across the country have struggled to fill vacancies once the pandemic blockages have been lifted.

The U.S. economy has recovered nearly 17 million of the more than 22 million jobs that were lost after the pandemic was declared in March 2020, according to data from the U.S. Department of Labor. But positions are available faster than candidates can fill them, the Related press reports, leading employers to come up with new incentives, such as fully paid tuition fees.

Data from the Ministry of Labor for the summer of 2021 also showed wages were up 4% from the previous year.