Amazon (AMZN) has announced on September 9, 2021, that they will be covering the cost of four-year college tuition for about 750,000 of its hourly workers in the United States, the latest move by a major US retailer to retain hourly employees in light of a competitive labor market. Beginning in January, Amazon for the first time, will pay for tuition, books, and other fees for warehouse, transportation, and other hourly employees who want to take on bachelor’s degrees. In addition, the company will also be paying for other types of education such as high school diploma programs, General Educational Development (GED) test, and English as a Second Language (ESL) certifications for employees.

Employees who have been working at the company for at least 90 days are qualified to use the benefit, and employees must continue working part-time or full-time at Amazon while taking classes. The decision came following the efforts of rival employers such as Walmart (WMT) and Target (TGT) to advance their college benefit programs for workers. Amazon also announced that it intends to retrain 300,000 employees for higher-skilled, fast-growing jobs within the company over the next four years, going beyond the pledge they made in 2019 to train 100,000 workers for new positions. “We are investing a lot of money on signing and incentives,” said Brian Olsavsky, Amazon’s chief financial officer, in a statement.