Fedex hiring down amid COVID-19
Online shipments also on the rise
Even among businesses deemed essential during the coronavirus pandemic, job openings are down. Delivery giant Fedex is among them, data shows.
Memphis-based Fedex listed 1,290 job openings on its website as of April 21, down from 3,400 job openings as of March 14, according to a dataset from data reporting company Thinknum. That's the Memphis logistics giant's lowest job openings count in at least two years — in April 2018, Fedex had around 3,710 job openings, per Thinknum.
The job opening decline is occurring even as Fedex is seeing an increase in online orders to homes during the coronavirus pandemic, as daily package volume at Fedex Ground increased this past quarter. Fedex's jobs site does not list openings among the independent contractors who deliver for Fedex Ground.
"We've seen an increase in e-commerce orders and shipments — and we expect this to continue," Fedex says on its website.
Fedex has also held hiring events for package handler positions at Fedex Express and Fedex Ground amid the pandemic, and it lists “critical openings available” for jobs including warehouse worker, maintenance technician and operations manager.
But COVID-19 hurt demand for Fedex services overall “due to its disruption of global manufacturing, supply chains and consumer spending,” the company said in its most recent quarter's financial filing. Additionally, the company has furloughed some Fedex Freight and Fedex Office employees due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tom Goldsby, Haslam Chair of Logistics at the University of Tennessee's Department of Supply Chain Management, expects Fedex to want to fill more frontline positions like retail giants Amazon and Walmart are, while scaling back hiring elsewhere.
“I do think the white-collar positions are probably going to see a little bit of a hiatus until things settle down,” he said. “That could be your analysts and your sales types at headquarters locations. I'd still expect them to want to have people on the frontlines moving and storing stuff, because that is absolutely essential.”
When asked for comment on Thinknum's data, Fedex said, "We regularly ramp up and scale back our recruiting based on business needs." The company added that it continues to hire and encourages people interested in a Fedex career to look for available jobs on its website.
Fedex rival UPS is also hiring fewer employees now than it did last year, according to Thinknum data. It had 1,740 job openings on April 20, down from 2,690 openings one year earlier.
The two delivery rivals' decline in job openings mirrors what other businesses are seeing as the COVID-19 pandemic has battered industries throughout the U.S. economy.
Virtually every business, essential or not, is looking for ways to reduce costs during the pandemic, said University of Memphis economist John Gnuschke, director of the university's Sparks Bureau of Business and Economic Research and Center for Manpower Studies. Keeping hiring to a minimum is one way to do that, he said.
“They're trying to maintain their labor force, both its quality and quantity, the best they can, but it's a different task in the face of a big recession,” Gnuschke said of Fedex. “Every company is facing the same kinds of challenges.”
Overall U.S. job openings fell 130,000 from January to February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' most recently available data. Job openings in the transportation, warehousing and utilities industries, however, increased by 12,000.
More recently, job openings on job search site Glassdoor dropped 20.5% from March 9 to April 6. Glassdoor said 60% of employers have reduced job openings since March 9, and job openings in the transportation and logistics industries fell 18.4% month-overmonth.
“I think as long as the coronavirus is a serious problem, we're going to have apprehension on the part of employers for expanding,” Gnuschke said.
Max Garland covers Fedex, logistics and health care for The Commercial Appeal. Reach him at max.garland@commercialappeal.com or 901-529-2651 and on Twitter @Maxgarlandtypes.
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