NEW YORK — Amazon will be sorting through 238 proposals from cities and regions in the United States, Canada and Mexico that are hoping to land the company’s second headquarters and the investment it’ll bring.

The online retailer kicked off its hunt for a second home base in September, promising 50,000 new jobs and construction spending of more than $5 billion. Proposals were due last week, and Amazon made clear that tax breaks and grants would be a big factor in deciding what entry prevails.

Amazon.com did not specify which cities or metro areas applied, but many of the locations have made their interest public. The company said Monday the proposals came from 43 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, as well as three Mexican states and six Canadian provinces.

In a tweet, the company said it was “excited to review each of them.”

Besides looking for financial incentives, Amazon had stipulated that it wanted to be near a metropolitan area with more than a million people; be able to attract top technical talent; be within 45 minutes of an international airport; have direct access to mass transit; and be able to expand that headquarters to as much as 8 million square feet in the next decade.

But that didn’t stop some apparent long shots from applying. A bid came from Alaska, according to Amazon, though the entire state has a population below a million.

“Most of the 238 probably lack some of those big-city advantages,” said Jed Kolko, the chief economist at job site Indeed. But most places probably could not pass up the chance of getting 50,000 jobs, “even if the odds of winning are low,” he said.

The seven U.S. states that Amazon said did not apply were: Arkansas, Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming.