The logistics firm details its plans for the upcoming holiday season

Fedex is feeling bullish going into the holidays and have said they will look to add 55,000 job positions to cover an expected 12.4% jump in year on year seasonal volume. They are also looking to invest $1.6bn in their ground operations in FY2016

This type of news could be important for several reasons;

  1. On the jobs front it could mean we see the jobs reports holding up strongly if this type of news is carried across other companies in both the shipping and retails sectors - tick one for the Fed
  2. It suggests that the retail picture could be strong over the period and thus a stronger consumer - tick two for the Fed
  3. The investment intention could signal expansion in the industry, which again is a signal for expected increases in both consumer and business demand - tick three for the Fed

Firstly, we obviously need to take the seasonal factor into consideration. Many of these 55k jobs are likely to be part time and only last the period. That will make the Challenger layoff reports in the new year important to gauge that effect

Secondly, the Fed would want to see any strong retail sales over the holidays not completely die into the new year

From the investment perspective the Fed will want to see that maintained, again especially into 2016. There's a lot of wind down into the end of the year as the decorations go up, thoughts of general expansion usually go down. Heavy talk of investment early in 2016 will be make a strong case for domestic demand, if the global picture is still weak

The first signal we get of all this will come from the Black Friday retail event Nov 27th

Update: The FedEx news comes as Amazon US said last week that they were going to add 100k part time jobs over the holidays. That's up from the 80k the hired last year. h/t Bud Spencer