Amazon’s incredible growth over the years has made it a textbook example of what it means for a business to scale, going from a scrappy startup in Jeff Bezos’ garage to a multinational corporation with more than 1.5 million employees.

The retailer recently announced it’s hiring 250,000 full- and part-time workers for the holiday season. That’s 100,000 more workers than the company recruited last year and reflects a robust U.S. economy heading into the holidays, says Gad Allon, a Wharton professor of operations, information, and decisions.

“What’s the main idea here? Amazon knows this is really the time,” Allon says during an interview with Wharton Business Daily on SiriusXM. “If the economy is great and humming with low unemployment, and if you don’t have enough people, you might lose the opportunity.” (Listen to the podcast.)

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