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- UPS will hire 100,000 seasonal workers for the 2019 holiday season. More than a third of those workers stay on after January, the company said.
- Jim Barber, UPS chief operating officer, said in the hiring announcement on Monday that UPS is estimating a record-setting peak season this year - more than 30 million packages per day.
- UPS also hired 100,000 seasonal workers in 2018, which was up 5% from 2017.
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The world's largest package delivery company is expecting record-setting business for the 2019 holiday season - and bolstering its ranks accordingly.
UPS said Monday that it plans to hire about 100,000 temporary workers. Those employees will begin in November and continue through January 2020, and chiefly consist of package handlers, drivers, and driver-helpers. A third of those workers are projected to stay on as permanent employees, UPS said.
"We expect another record Peak season this year, with daily package deliveries nearly doubling compared to our average of 20 million per day," Jim Barber, UPS chief operating officer, said in the announcement. "In order to make that happen, once again we're recruiting about 100,000 people for some of the country's best seasonal jobs."
In 2018, UPS hired 100,000 seasonal workers to deliver a forecast of 800 million packages over the peak season - 5% more than UPS delivered in 2017. UPS estimated daily deliveries of 31 million packages in 2018, though did not release the number ultimately delivered. This year it simply said it expects "nearly double" the average delivery rate of 20 million packages per day.
The holidays have challenged UPS in the past. The Atlanta-based delivery giant had to delay deliver es in late Nov. and early December 2017 after a deluge of Cyber Monday packages. ShipMatrix, a Pennsylvania-based delivery intelligence firm, said some 89% of UPS packages were delivered on-time during that early holiday period, compared to 99% at FedEx.
Associated Press
FILE- In this Dec. 19, 2018, file photo a UPS driver prepares to deliver packages. UPS said Monday, Sept. 9, 2019, that it expects to hire about 100,000 seasonal workers and pay them more to handle the avalanche of packages shipped between Thanksgiving and Christmas. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
In addition to that avalanche of parcels, e-commerce has had other quirky impacts on UPS's holiday operations. The company said last year that the biggest day for returns actually came before Christmas. Customers returned 1.5 million packages on December 19.
Those returns largely come from purchases made before Black Friday and, to a lesser extent, an earlier Hanukkah. They're also from people who bought a gift for Christmas, weighed their choice, and then decided they didn't want to give it after all, Kathleen Marran, then UPS's vice president of US marketing, previously told Business Insider.
The big hiring announcement, along with indicating that impact of e-commerce, also hints at a healthy