(Reuters) ? United Parcel Service Inc said on Monday it plans to hire 55,000 seasonal workers during the holiday shipping season, up from 50,000 a year ago, due to "solid" shopping activity and an increase in global volume.
A strong wave of shipping activity in the final days leading up to Christmas is expected to fuel holiday delivery volume. Holiday deliveries are a closely watched indicator of overall economic health and customer sentiment.
While not giving projections for the overall season, the world's largest package delivery said it expects a 6 percent increase in delivery volume during "peak week," or the seven-day stretch leading up to Christmas. It expects to deliver more than 120 million packages around the world during this period, compared with 113 million delivered during the same period last year.
The company shipped 440 million packages during the entire holiday season a year ago. A spokesman said the company is not projecting 2011's total volume.
FedEx Corp, UPS's chief rival, said last month it plans to add 20,000 seasonal workers, up 15 percent from the 17,000 it hired in 2010. FedEx expects a 12 percent jump in volume, to a total of 260 million packages, during the season because of increases in online shopping.
UPS said that the growth of e-commerce is increasingly condensing the holiday's highest-volume shipping period as more and more buyers wait until later in the season to buy items that need to be shipped. For decades, volumes remained high through the month separating Thanksgiving and Christmas, but now the last two weeks before Christmas are the highest volume.
This makes the period "more of a nail-biter than it used to be," UPS Chief Financial Officer Kurt Kuehn said in an interview with Reuters last month.
The 55,000 UPS seasonal hires will work throughout the country as loaders and unloaders, and assist drivers.
"Early indications point to a solid holiday shopping and shipping season," UPS Chief Marketing Officer Alan Gershenhorn said in a press release.
Even though it does not give projections on the entire season, the company said it expects volume in half of the last 10 days before Christmas will approach or exceed 25 million packages a day. That compares with average daily volume of about 15 million.
In 2010, UPS reported our days of volume exceeding 24 million deliveries during the season.
This year, the peak shipping day is expected to be December 22, with delivery volume approaching 26 million. The peak air day should be December 23, with more than 6 million air packages delivered.
Shares of UPS were down less than 1 percent Monday, trading at $69.40.
(Reporting by John D. Stoll in Detroit, editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Gunna Dickson)
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111107/us_nm/us_ups_holiday
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