Washington, (IANS) : US-based e-commerce and cloud computing company Amazon has plans to create more than 100,000 new jobs in the US over the next 18 months, a media report said.

The e-commerce giant, which employs 180,000 full-time US workers, said in a statement on Thursday it would create an additional 100,000 full-time, full-benefit jobs in the country by mid-2018, The Financial Times reported.

Amid surging retail sales, Amazon grew its global headcount by 38 per cent in the third quarter of last year, compared with a year prior.

The company added 80,000 new employees, both full and part time, in the 12 months to October 2016, and has more than 300,000 employees.

Amazon is the latest company to deliver job and investment announcements ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration next week.

“Obviously it is great for Trump. The question is, what does it come at the expense of? Because Amazon has certainly been a job killer for everything offline,” Youssef Squali, analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald, was quoted as saying.

Amazon was a frequent target of criticism from the president-elect during the campaign.

However, its chief Jeff Bezos appeared to smooth things over by participating in a meeting between tech leaders and Trump last month.