Adidas, the global manufacturer of shoes, clothing, and accessories to hire 2,800 employees in 2022, to meet the labor shortage in the industry. The hiring wave will involve 307 locations in 47 countries.
The Adidas hiring news follows layoffs at its current subsidiary Reebok, which revealed plans Tuesday to lay off 150 employees in advance of its sale to Authentic Brands Group.
Adidas currently employs 62,000 people with about 7,000 based in Germany. The average age of employees is 32. The company employs about 5,300 employees at its headquarters in Germany.
More than 800 of the new employees will be based in Germany. An Adidas spokesman said Wednesday that 800-plus of the openings that are currently listed on the firm’s careers’ site are for jobs in the U.S., including 130 that are in Portland, Ore., which is where the athletic company’s U.S. headquarters are located.
Revealing its hiring plans, Adidas played up such elements of its corporate culture as referring to fellow employees on a first-name basis, “a casual-to-sporty” dress code, and an employee base representing more than 100 different countries. The company noted that about 90 percent of Adidas employees do not have a German passport and the company language is English.
The statement also highlighted the company’s commitment to diversity. Following the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, employees at Adidas rallied together and publicly decried the need for greater diversity in its corporate ranks from top to bottom. With women accounting for 35 percent of leadership roles, the aim is to boost that figure to more than 40 percent by 2025.
Amanda Rajkumar, executive board member who is responsible for Human Resources, people, and culture, said in a statement, “We want to set standards as an employer. Adidas is an employer like no other, and we go above and beyond every day to create an attractive working environment for our employees.”
As reported by The Wall Street Journal last week, Adidas has leased 107,000 square feet of office space in downtown Los Angeles to expand its sales and marketing operations. The company will share more details about that before moving into the space later this year, the Adidas spokesman said.
