UPS (UPS) revealed huge cuts to its workforce throughout 2025.
The company’s third quarter earnings report, which beat expectations on the top and bottom lines, also revealed that through the first nine months of the year, UPS had let go of some 48,000 employees.
Those cuts included 34,000 operational jobs as part of its Efficiency Reimagined initiative and 14,000 jobs, primarily within management, as part of its Fit to Serve plan to streamline its business. The company declared it expects total savings of $3.5 billion as part of this push.
At the conclude of last year, UPS employed 490,000 people, including 78,000 in management positions.
“UPS is executing the most significant strategic shift in our company’s history,” CEO Carol Tomé notified investors on the company’s earnings call. “We’re focutilized on winning where it matters most, capturing high-value parts of the market and onboarding customers with increasingly complex logistics necessarys.”
Following the announcement, the stock jumped 8% on Tuesday, but opened flat on Wednesday.
The layoffs were partially related to a scaling back of UPS’s partnership with Amazon (AMZN) as the e-commerce retailer builds up its own delivery network.
Tomé declared that compared to last year, Amazon’s total volume was down 21.2% in the quarter, a hugeger difference than the 13% drop in the first half of this year. By late 2026, UPS plans to cut Amazon shipping volumes by more than half.
That also led to alters in its US network, with the company closing an additional 19 buildings in the quarter, bringing its total so far this year to 93 buildings.
Alongside these cost-cutting plans, Tomé added that tariff uncertainty appeared “somewhat resolved,” and as its Amazon “glide down” continues, the company declared it expects revenue in its current quarter to tally $24 billion, up from $21.4 billion in Q3.
Read more: How a CD can support you prepare for — and survive — a layoff
Traditionally, UPS has been considered an economic bellwether, capturing a wide array of consumer demand and business activity. But Bank of America analyst Ken Hoexter declared recent results offer a tough comparison to last year or earlier this year, when consumers seeed to receive ahead of tariffs.
“Demand is just not improving. It’s kind of flatlined, so what you’re seeing companies now do is receive way more aggressive on the costs,” he notified Yahoo Finance.
Wall Street was optimistic after Tuesday’s news, but the stock is still under pressure, down more than 23% year to date. That’s against rival FedEx’s (FDX) 10% loss so far this year, which also lags the S&P 500’s (^GSPC) 17% gain.
Leave a Reply