Retail

FedEx Adds to Seasonal Hiring Boost (FDX, BBY, JCP)

FedEx Corp. (NYSE: FDX) expects to handle more than 260 million packages during the coming holiday season. That’s a 12% increase from a year ago, and to cope with the flood the company plans to hire 20,000 temporary workers. That’s…

By Paul Ausick
Published October 24, 2011, 11:46am ET · 1 min read

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FedEx Corp. (NYSE: FDX) expects to handle more than 260 million packages during the coming holiday season. That’s a 12% increase from a year ago, and to cope with the flood the company plans to hire 20,000 temporary workers. That’s more than we noted from either Best Buy Co. Inc. (NYSE: BBY) or J.C. Penney Co. (NYSE: JCP) in our recent look at the retailers expected to do the most seasonal hiring this year.
That’s good news for employment, but not altogether a boost for FedEx. The company noted that most of the volume increase this year is coming from its low-profit SmartPost residential service where the US Post Office completes the package delivery. The SmartPost service includes mostly light-weight, unspecified delivery date packages from on-line sales that do not generate a lot of revenue for FedEx.

The company still expects retail sales to rise 2.5%-3% this holiday season. However, if FedEx is right about where its revenues are coming from, local retailers could be be in for a tough holiday shopping season. Large retail chains, though, could get a somewhat bigger boost from an increase in on-line sales.

Paul Ausick

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Paul Ausick

Paul Ausick has been writing for 247Wallst.com for more than a decade. He has written extensively on investing in the energy, defense, and technology sectors. In a previous life, he wrote technical documentation and managed a marketing communications group in Silicon Valley.

He has a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Chicago and now lives in Montana, where he fishes for trout in the summer and stays inside during the winter.

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