FedEx: Holiday shipping to increase 12% this year

FedEx Corp. projects holiday shipping will increase 12% this year, and the company plans to hire more seasonal workers.

FedEx expects to deliver more than 260 million packages globally between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Reuters reports.

To cope with the additional deliveries, FedEx said it would hire 20,000 seasonal workers, which is 18 percent more than last year, Bloomberg Businessweek reports.

The Street reports:

According to the National Retail Federation, holiday sales are expected to increase 2.8 percent in November and December, compared with an average increase of 2.6 percent over the last ten years. Also, the NRF said 46.7 percent of shoppers will buy online this year, compared to 43.9 percent in 2010, which of course is good news for FedEx and UPS.

“Retail inventory such as apparel, personal consumer electronics and luxury goods as well as books and other items from large Internet retailers will account for a large portion of FedEx holiday volumes,” the company said in a statement on Monday, Bloomberg Businessweek reports.

FedEx's forecast "is a combination of maybe the economy is a little better than we thought, and that this really speaks to the growth of on-line shopping," BB&T Capital Markets analyst Kevin Sterling told Reuters.

The Memphis, Tenn.-based company said it expects its busiest day this year to be Dec. 12, when it estimates it will move more than 17 million packages, Bloomberg Businessweek reports. That would be the busiest day in FedEx history and a 10 percent increase over FedEx’s busiest day in 2010.