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The planned job losses amount to around 6% of the company's global workforce.
07:56, Fri, Jan 30, 2026 Updated: 07:58, Fri, Jan 30, 2026
The planned job losses amount to around 6% of the company's global workforce (Image: Getty)
The multinational delivery firm United Parcel Service (UPS) will cut up to 30,000 jobs this year while also closing 24 facilities as part of a major overhaul of its global network, it has been announced. As part of a multi-year turnaround plan, UPS said it would be winding down its partnership with Amazon, whose deliveries had become "very dilutive" to profit margins, despite the online retailer remaining its largest customer.
The planned job cuts amount to around 6% of UPS’s global workforce of approximately 490,000 employees, with most reductions affecting staff involved in parcel handling and transportation. CFO Brian Dykes said on a call with analysts on Tuesday following the company’s quarterly earnings release that UPS also plans to reduce total operational hours by approximately 25 million hours due to the Amazon decline.
UPS has identified 24 buildings for closure in the first half of 2026, with additional closures possible later this year (Image: Getty)
UPS also said it has identified 24 buildings for closure in the first half of 2026, with additional closures possible later in the year. Last year, UPS closed 93 buildings, it reiterated Tuesday.
The planned job cuts come after UPS eliminated 48,000 jobs last year, 34,000 of which were operational and 14,000 of which were management. The company had previously estimated those combined reductions to total around 20,000.
UPS will be shifting its focus away from low‑margin e‑commerce volumes and towards higher‑value sectors, including healthcare logistics, with vaccine and medical‑product delivery becoming a larger part of its strategy.
The delivery firm reached an agreement in principle with Amazon last year to cut the number of parcels it handles for the retailer by over half by the second half of 2026.
Despite being UPS's largest customer, Amazon is not UPS's most profitable, chief executive Carol Tomé said (Image: Getty)
Chief executive Carol Tomé told analysts: "We’re in the final six months of our Amazon accelerated glide‑down plan and for the full year 2026, we intend to glide down another million pieces per day while continuing to reconfigure our network."
This comes after she previously said: “Amazon is our largest customer, but it’s not our most profitable customer. Its margin is very dilutive to the US domestic business.”
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In a statement on Tuesday, an International Brotherhood of Teamsters representative, which represents more than half of UPS's workforce, said its union members “still know [their] worth” if UPS brings back its buyout program. “We’re perfectly happy for UPS to realize growth and cost savings on the backs of corporate managers so long as they uphold their contractual commitments to our members and reward the Teamsters who actually make the company run,” they said.
The restructuring comes as Amazon continues to expand its own delivery network, but also mistakenly announced job cuts as part of a wider restructuring plan this month. The retailer completed 6.3 billion US deliveries in 2024, outperforming both UPS and FedEx.
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