FedEx Corp. plans to hire about 70,000 seasonal workers to handle the holiday surge of packages, a 27 per cent increase from last year’s peak, in what is expected to be an unprecedented level of delivery demand.

The courier has already added thousands of workers to keep up with a jump in deliveries as people order more online because of coronavirus concerns. In the quarter through May, FedEx’s U.S. ground deliveries rose 20 per cent from a year earlier. The company will likely match or surpass that for its fiscal first quarter, which ended in August.

To keep up with demand, FedEx also will expand Sunday delivery service to 95 per cent of the U.S. population by mid-September and has built more automated sorting centers, including more capacity to handle oversize packages.

“These strategic investments will help better support what is expected to be an unprecedented holiday shipping season,” said Chief Operating Officer Raj Subramaniam in a statement Thursday.

FedEx and United Parcel Service Inc. have benefited from consumers ordering more online because of the pandemic. That’s helped propel FedEx’s shares to surge 51 per cent this year through Wednesday and UPS to jump 42 per cent, compared with an 11 per cent rise in the S&P 500. If the gains hold, they would be the biggest annual stock increases for both companies since 2013.

FedEx fell 2.3 per cent to US$222.69 at 12:07 p.m. amid broader market declines.