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Tesco has announced plans to create a massive 16,000 new permanent supermarket roles in the UK.

Most of the new permanent positions will consist of temporary roles created at the start of the pandemic converting into long-term roles.

During this year, Tesco has taken on over 45,000 temporary staff due to an increase in demand for online orders when lockdowns came into force.

The trend for online ordering of groceries and other items is showing no signs of a slowdown even now, so Tesco are now making thousands of workers who joined them on fixed terms contracts into permanent members of staff.

10,000 of the new permanent positions at Tesco will be for ‘pickers’ to facilitate the orders placed by online shoppers. There will also be 3,000 jobs for drivers on offer, along with 3,000 other roles across the rest of the retailer’s business operations.

The 16,000 new jobs announced by Tesco are in addition to the 4,000 new permanent jobs which the supermarket chain has filled since the pandemic began. Although all of the new positions will be permanent, there will be a mix of full time vacancies and part time jobs up for grabs.

Before the start of the Coronavirus pandemic, fewer than 1 in 10 orders by Tesco shoppers was done online. That ratio has now increased so that around 1 in 6 orders are now placed via the Tesco website and app.

In concrete numbers, Tesco say that they have grown their online orders from around 600,000 customers to nearly one and a half million during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Announcing the new permanent roles at the supermarket chain, head of Tesco UK and Ireland, Jason Tarry, said: “Since the start of the pandemic, our colleagues have helped us to more than double our online capacity, safely serving nearly 1.5 million customers every week and prioritising vulnerable customers to ensure they get the food they need.”

“These new roles will help us continue to meet online demand for the long term, and will create permanent employment opportunities for 16,000 people across the UK,” added Mr Tarry.

Offering commentary on the announcement by Tesco, Clive Black, a retail analyst for Shore Capital, said: “The crisis has seen a dramatic increase in the size of the online grocery market in the UK. It does not look like, and Tesco UK does not seem to think, it is going to revert back to the pre-coronavirus levels.”

“As the market expands, economies of scale start to come into play. You put all those things together and the industry goes from marginally loss-making to marginally profitable,” added Mr Black.

Further Reading:

Working At Tesco

Supermarket Jobs Guide

Perks & Benefits Of Working At Supermarket Chains