A day after Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) said it would hire 100,000 full-time and part-time workers in the United States and Canada, FedEx Corp. (NYSE: FDX) said it would add 70,000 workers. One of the world’s largest shipping companies said holiday demand triggered the plans. Additionally, the only reason that FedEx would need the army of people is if e-commerce is expected to surge during the period. Brick-and-mortar customers usually take their own packages home.
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FedEx said most of the workers would be part of its FedEx Ground network. These are the people who drive trucks and deliver door to door.
Since Amazon and FedEx broke up last year, the shipping company will need to rely on other e-commerce traffic. FedEx says Amazon is just a little more than 1% of its business. Other e-commerce clients are the customers who will need the new FedEx workers, and thus drive the FedEx worker additions. Amazon may be the world’s largest online shopping center, but the sector is made up of tens of thousands of other retailers, if not more.
In many ways, the health of e-commerce is based outside Amazon’s success. Although Amazon brings in billions of dollars from holiday sales, if it were stealing most of these sales from other e-commerce companies, online sellers would be so troubled that FedEx’s delivery traffic likely would be down. On the contrary, FedEx may have one of the better holidays in its history.
The FedEx news is another blow to in-store shopping. People who drive to stores generally take what they have bought with them. Online shoppers can’t.
FedEx’s announcement means people will be home for the holidays, on personal computers, tablets and smartphones.
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