Amazon has hired almost 1/2 million people in less than year….

The retail, delivery service, computer server, and just about everything else company keeps gobbling up the know world like Pac-Man and the Borg….

It’s all all good for the jobs….

But at some point ?

Somebody IS gonna have to break all this up ….

It’s just getting too damn BIG….

Amazon has embarked on an extraordinary hiring binge this year, vacuuming up an average of 1,400 new workers a day and solidifying its power as online shopping becomes more entrenched in the coronavirus pandemic.

The hiring has taken place at Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle, at its hundreds of warehouses in rural communities and suburbs, and in countries such as India and Italy. Amazon added 427,300 employees between January and October, pushing its work force to more than 1.2 million people globally, up more than 50 percent from a year ago. Its number of workers now approaches the entire population of Dallas.

The spree has accelerated since the onset of the pandemic, which has turbocharged Amazon’s business and made it a winner of the crisis. Starting in July, the company brought on about 350,000 employees, or 2,800 a day. Most have been warehouse workers, but Amazon has also hired software engineers and hardware specialists to power enterprises such as cloud computing, streaming entertainment and devices, which have boomed in the pandemic….

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Its expansion is unfolding as lawmakers and regulators in Washington and Europe have sounded the alarm over tech power. This month, European Union regulators brought antitrust chargesagainst Amazon, accusing it of unfairly using its size and access to data to harm smaller merchants in its marketplace. Amazon has said merchants are thriving on its site, with their share of sales growing in the pandemic. The Federal Trade Commission is also examining the company, with President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. expected to continue scrutinizing the tech giants.

“We are turning into Amazon nation,” said Margaret O’Mara, a history professor at the University of Washington and a contributing New York Times opinion writer.

Having employees in nearly every state gives Amazon, which has warehouses around the country to be closer to customers, potentially outsize political leverage, Ms. O’Mara said. She added that history has shown there are risks when a region or country becomes too dependent on any one employer, though she said Amazon had not reached that point.

Amazon has portrayed its hiring as a boon for workers laid low by the pandemic-induced recession, as unemployment has soared and as restaurants, airlines and other businesses suffer….

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