October is traditionally the beginning of the holiday season. Cooler weather makes one think about the upcoming holidays: Thanksgiving and Christmas. It is only natural for people to want to celebrate with family and friends after a couple of disastrous pandemically mandated years. As people are also dealing with an ugly pandemic, they are starting to stock up now and to shop early for the perfect gifts. What is the current state of the supply chain? Does it have the capacity to handle the holiday rush? The breakdown can be found here.
UPS
To handle the holiday rush this season, UPS plans to hire more than 100,000 workers, as it did the past two years [1]. The company plans to hire part-time and full-time seasonal employees, primarily package handlers, drivers, and driver helpers. The company promotes seasonal jobs as positions that can lead to year-round employment. In recent years, according to UPS, almost 35% of people hired for seasonal package-handling jobs do land permanent positions.
FedEx
According to FedEx, the slowdown in the global economy hurt the number of shipments it handled in August and is expected to continue for the next few months. Additionally, it announced a number of cost-cutting measures, including grounding planes and reducing staff hours. It has not announced a seasonal hiring target yet for this year [2].
USPS
As part of USPS’s peak season preparations, 46 additional package processing machines will go online. These new machines have been added to the Postal Service’s equipment inventory since the beginning of the year to increase efficiency. While the Postal Service plans to use these PSAs again in peak season 2022, the number of temporary peak annexes will be significantly reduced from last year’s 36. Beginning in October 2022, the Postal Service plans to hire only 29,000 temporary peak-season workers [3].
Walmart
Not to get left out, Walmart also announced its hiring schedule. There will be 40,000 U.S. workers hired by Walmart for the holidays, mostly seasonal workers. According to the retailer, the company is in a stronger staffing position heading into the holiday season than last year and [4] is now just hiring seasonal staff rather than permanent staff.
Whichever way you chose, it is recommended to plan ahead. Shopping online has benefits, as well as shopping in person. You need to decide what is best for you.
Notes:
- ^https://www.npr.org/2022/09/10/1122234117/ups-hiring-100000-workers-holiday-shopping (go back ↩)
- ^https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/28/economy/seasonal-hiring (go back ↩)
- ^https://www.eseller365.com/usps-2022-peak-season-plans-early-look/ (go back ↩)
- ^https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/28/economy/seasonal-hiring (go back ↩)
