Online bookseller Amazon has announced that it will be hiring more than 70,000 full-time seasonal employees across its warehouses in the United States. That is a 40 percent increase from last year and an indication that Amazon expects things to pick up this year. It is not clear what it will be doing in the EU.

Amazon, which has about 88,400 employees, said it has converted more than 7,000 temporary employees in the United States into full-time employees so far this year. Retailers typically hire seasonal employees in the weeks leading up to the holiday shopping season to work in stores and help in distribution and fulfilling online orders.

Amazon, the world's largest online retailer, is spending billions of dollars on expansion, which has taken a toll on its earnings. It unveiled two new high-definition tablets last week with a unique on-screen helpdesk feature it hopes will give it an advantage over devices from rivals Apple and Google.