Amazon promises to create 100,000 jobs, and Trump team quickly takes credit

Amazon promised on Thursday that it would create 100,000 new jobs in the United States over the next 18 months. And that prediction quickly got tangled up in politics.

President-elect Donald Trump's team quickly took credit for the news. "The president-elect was pleased to play role in that decision," incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer said on a transition call, according to The Hill.

Spicer referenced the December meeting between Trump and several tech leaders, including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

But the Amazon news isn't quite as drastic as appears at first glance.

Amazon said the company would grow its full-time U.S. workforce from 180,000 in 2016 to at least 280,000 by mid-2018.

As Amazon analyst Jan Dawson pointed out on Twitter, Amazon already created 135,000 jobs globally over the past 18 months. An additional 100,000 jobs within the United States "suggests only a slightly higher run rate and ratio of U.S. to global jobs to the past 18 months," Dawson said.

"As with a lot of the announcements we've seen lately, this seems mostly about highlighting existing job creation plans rather than some new direction," Dawson noted.

Many companies, from Fiat Chrysler to Alibaba, have announced their job plans in recent weeks ahead of Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration.

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“Innovation is one of our guiding principles at Amazon, and it’s created hundreds of thousands of American jobs. These jobs are not just in our Seattle headquarters or in Silicon Valley—they’re in our customer service network, fulfillment centers and other facilities in local communities throughout the country,” Bezos said in a statement announcing Amazon's jobs plans.

Amazon's new full-time jobs will be concentrated in new fulfillment centers in Texas, California, Florida and New Jersey, the company said.