Lisa Pendry has been laid off eight times since 2008, and each time it’s been even harder to find a new job.

This time, she’s spent three months searching. But it’s tricky to find companies that are hiring, she says, and even more difficult to get an in-person interview.

Which is why she woke up early, put on a flowered top and arrived at this parking lot in Baltimore, eager to meet someone who might hire her.

“I’ve got three kids to feed,” said Pendry, 44, who most recently worked as an administrative assistant for Allstate Insurance. “It doesn’t matter what it is anymore, I just need a job.”

The possibility of an hourly position drew thousands of people to Amazon’s warehouse here Wednesday morning, where they started lining up at 4 a.m. and waited hours in rows that snaked through the sprawling parking lot on a blistering hot day.

The on-site interviews were part of a one-day effort by Amazon to fill 50,000 jobs across the country that it says are necessary to fuel an ever-growing expansion. The e-commerce giant says it made scores of job offers on the spot at a dozen locations from Buffalo, New York, to Oklahoma City. (Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, owns The Washington Post.)

In Baltimore, Amazon planned to add 1,200 people to its current lineup of 4,200. The jobs, which pay more than Maryland’s $9.25 minimum wage, come with health and disability insurance, as well as a retirement savings plan and stock awards. It was enough to draw a huge crowd on a blistering hot August day, and Amazon recruiters were ready with bottled water and sno cones to cool people down.

“We are excited to be creating great jobs that offer highly competitive wages, benefits starting on day one and the choice for employees to go back to school,” John Olsen, a human resources vice president at Amazon, said in a statement. “These are great opportunities with runway for advancement.”

As Amazon hires at a furious pace, many longtime retailers are scaling back by closing hundreds of stores and doing away with coveted commission-earning positions. Retail jobs – which for years have been stepping stones into the workforce – have increasingly shifted from America’s shopping malls to warehouses on the outskirts of town.

“Retail employment has traditionally been face-to-face, but technology is changing that,” said Jed Kolko, chief economist for the jobs site Indeed. “That has an impact on the number of jobs that are created and destroyed, but also on where those jobs are and who gets them.”

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.ndtv.com