Investors are looking for early Christmas presents. By that I mean we need insights into whether this Christmas season will be a good one or bad one. The National Retail Federation expects holiday sales to increase by 4.1 percent, which promoted FedEx and UPS to do their own forecasting.
FedEx is forecasting a 13% increase during the holiday season this year. An increase in Internet shopping is promoting FedEx to forecast an increase of holiday shipments in 2012. According to FedEx, the forecast for the holiday is 280 million shipments that would be a record number. FedEx is also preparing to hire around 20,000 seasonal workers. This hiring would be in addition to the 300,000 permanent workers company employs worldwide.
United Parcel Service known as UPS said it expects to be up between 5 and 7 percent from last year. The CFO said it expects to ship more than 500 million packages from Thanksgiving to Christmas. Kuehn said 40% of the packages are shipping directly to the consumers, which will be the largest increase ever.
Many of the analysts believe this could be the best holiday season in years for everyone. According to the article, “three-fourths of retailers expect a boost in holiday sales this year, which in turn means they’ll need more help from job seekers”. It’s a crucial time for all retailers, many of them are hiring early.
Do you think we will have a strong holiday season or the forecasts are just to manipulate the market?
I think it is possible that we will have a strong holiday season this year. While unemployment is still high, I do think there have been signs that the economy is improving– i.e., the housing market picking up in many areas. I think that means that consumers are feeling more confident and that could very well mean more spending this holiday season.
It is possible that FedEx forecasts are right for this holiday season. They are probably using last years and maybe some years before that to forecast this years holiday shopping season. This could work because the economy (although still down) has been pretty steady in the past few years. The employment rate hasn’t been unstable either.