As the battle to secure Amazon's second headquarters rages on, the e-commerce giant is taking a minute to highlight its growing Illinois presence.
Amazon announced Monday that it now has 10,000 full-time employees in Illinois, a notable feat given that most of the roles have been added in just the last three years.
Amazon opened its first Illinois fulfillment center in Joliet in 2015 with a team of 1,000 full-time workers. The company now has nine fulfillment centers in the state, including six in the Chicagoland area. Amazon's Illinois fulfillment centers total more than 6,000,000 square feet.
In addition to its fulfillment centers, the company has two Prime Now hubs, an Amazon Fresh site, a sortation center, four delivery stations, an Amazon Books store, and a corporate office in Illinois.
Amazon's Chicago corporate office holds about 200 engineers and cloud infrastructure professionals, and it's planning to grow that number to 400 people, Amazon said. Amazon said its investments in Illinois from 2014 through 2016 resulted in an additional $200 million to the state’s economy.
“We welcome Amazon’s growth and creation of more than 10,000 jobs, which speaks to the quality of our work force here in Illinois,” Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner said in a statement.
Illinois' 10,000 Amazon employees still doesn't crack the top five in terms of states with the most Amazon employees. Washington, California, Texas, New Jersey, Kentucky and Pennsylvania all have 11,000 or more local Amazon workers, according to data compiled last year.
What does all this mean for Chicago's chances at landing HQ2? Not much. Amazon is expanding in cities and states across the U.S., like in Boston, where it's leasing more space and hiring 2,000 more employees. The Washington, D.C. area is thought by many to be the odds-on favorite to get the headquarters, as it has three locations on the list of 20 finalists. Amazon officials were touring each of those locations last week.
