Home Depot had some good news Wednesday for metro Atlantans.
The company will hire 2,250 seasonal workers in the area this spring, the retailer’s busiest season. And if past performance is repeated, many of those workers will remain on staff after the season ends.
“The past two years we’ve seen more than half of our seasonal associates transition into permanent positions with the company,” said spokesman Stephen Holmes.
The jobs announcement comes on the heels of a metro economy that is still struggling. Unemployment in metro Atlanta rose to 8.4 percent in December, up from 8 percent in November, according to the Georgia Department of Labor. The rate was 8.9 percent in December 2011.
It also adds to the number of jobs Home Depot has added or announced locally in the last year or so.
The company recently broke ground on a 1.1.-million-square-foot “fulfillment center” warehouse in McDonough for online orders. The facility will add 250 jobs.
And last October, Home Depot opened a contact center in Kennesaw that supports the retailer’s online business through sales support and customer service via email and online chat. The $24 million facility is expected to net 700 jobs by 2015.
Overall, the Atlanta-based retailer expects to hire 80,000 seasonal workers nationally this year, 10,000 more jobs than in 2012.
The beefed up presence in Atlanta comes as the company’s online orders have jump as more consumers use the Internet to either make purchases or to browse the company’s catalog and then head to locations for in-store purchases.
A typical Home Depot store, for example, has 35,000 SKUs — the code retailers use to identify a product — while the company’s website has up to 600,000 SKUs, Holmes said.
Home Depot, the world’s largest home improvement retailer, anticipates consumers will buy more this year as the economy slowly improves, especially in the hard-hit housing industry, which has shown signs of a more consistent recovery in the last few months.
Home Depot has 60 stores in metro Atlanta and 90 stores across the state. About 20,000 Georgians are employed by the company.
Job seekers can apply at http://www.careers.homedepot.com.
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