UPS employment rises over 20,000 in Louisville
UPS employment in the Louisville area has topped 20,000 for the first time, and the shipping giant expects to add more than 5,000 workers with the completion of a $1 billion expansion of the Worldport air-package hub at Louisville International Airport in November 2010.
UPS’ 20,674 workers at the end of last year outnumbered Jefferson County Public Schools’ employment and represented an increase of nearly 2,300 workers from a year earlier.
The June opening of a 700,000-square-foot heavy-freight air hub, which has about 1,100 workers, made up a significant part of the hiring, said Pat Murphy, work force planning manager.
Employment was relatively steady at UPS’ air division, including pilots, package handlers and administrative positions; its ground division, which includes the brown-truck package delivery service; and Supply Chain Solutions, the company’s logistics operation, Murphy said.
In 1982, when United Parcel Service introduced overnight service to a small air-package sorting center it had opened in Louisville the previous year, the company had 115 workers here.
“From a personal perspective, it’s been amazing to watch,” said Patti Hobbs, a spokeswoman who has been with the Louisville operation since its early days.
“Back in the beginning, we knew everybody,” she said. Now, “you can’t possibly know over 20,000 people with that first-name basis. The growth has been phenomenal.”
Murphy said he does not expect more large increases in employment until the first phase of the Worldport expansion is complete in 2009, with final construction work ending the next year. UPS expects the added capacity will create 1,284 full-time jobs and 3,787 part-time positions.
In the meantime, UPS continues to hire year round to replace workers lost through attrition, Murphy said.
Worldport was the largest capital expansion project in UPS history, doubling the air hub’s size to 4 million square feet and boosting the sorting capacity from 215,000 packages per hour to 304,000.
The current expansion will add 1.1 million square feet to the hub and increase sorting capacity by 60 percent.
As UPS has grown, so has its importance to the Louisville economy — not only through direct employment, but also by spurring the development of other businesses that take advantage of the ready access to UPS shipping.
“UPS is a tremendous asset to the community in terms of economic development and their philanthropic involvement,” said Eileen Pickett, senior vice president for community and economic development at Greater Louisville Inc. “We work really closely with them … to attract business to the community. So overall, their growth means growth to the community.”
One challenge to continued expansion at UPS is finding enough people to fill the mostly part-time jobs available at Worldport, Murphy said.
Pickett said she believes the community can continue to meet the needs at UPS with programs such as Metropolitan College, which provides pay and free college tuition for students who work for UPS. “I think it’s going to continue to be a great partnership,” she said.
