Amazon Facility in Eastern Iowa to Hire 1,000, Open This Summer

The expected opening of a giant Amazon facility has changed again. This time, the timeline has been moved up, by more than a year.

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It was back in May of 2021 that we first told you of an, unconfirmed at that time, enormous Amazon fulfillment center that would likely be built in eastern Iowa. Just two months later, Amazon confirmed the news and announced plans to hire 1,000 people. The plan was to open the facility in September of 2022. Then issues with the global supply chain struck and Amazon said that, as a result, it wouldn't open until 2024.

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Now with the global supply chain back on track, Amazon has announced they're opening the 158-acre, 640,000-square-foot robotics fulfillment center just north of I-80 in Davenport this summer.

Officials with the Quad Cities Chamber of Commerce announced on Tuesday that "they're going to be hiring. And they hope to open by August of this year."

Amazon's website has jobs open in Iowa City and Dubuque but has none listed for Davenport at this time. Interestingly enough, there are two pages of Amazon openings in Davenport already posted on Indeed.

After seeing a quarterly loss last year, Amazon's first in seven years, earnings for the first quarter of 2023 were up 9 percent compared to a year ago. That news, announced late last month, caused Amazon shares to jump 11 percent.

According to US Funds, Amazon employed 1.608 million people as of late 2022. More than 1.1 million of those are in the United States. Walmart is the world's largest employer, with 2.3 million workers.