The Dallas Express
By Kellen McGovern Jones

A multibillion-dollar federal delivery contract awarded to FedEx coincided with a sharp rise in the company’s use of foreign workers, even as it carried out large-scale layoffs of U.S. employees across multiple states.

In December 2023, the U.S. Transportation Command selected FedEx to provide package delivery services for government agencies under an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract with a total face value of $2.24 billion, according to a report by GovCon Wire.

The award covered the Next Generation Delivery Service-2 program, with a base performance period running from April 1, 2023, through September 30, 2026, and options that could extend the work through September 30, 2030.

Since that award, publicly available immigration data show a substantial increase in FedEx’s hiring of foreign workers through the H-1B visa program.

According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services H-1B data hub, FedEx had roughly two dozen approved H-1B workers at the time of the contract award in 2022. Over the subsequent three years, the same database indicates the company has hired approximately 500 H-1B workers, with the sharpest increases occurring in 2024 and 2025. Much of that growth appears concentrated in Tennessee, where FedEx is headquartered, though filings list positions across several states.

Separately, data from a privately operated H-1B salary database indicate that some visa applications filed by FedEx for roles in Texas were lower-level business or technical jobs, including titles such as “DIGITAL MARKETING ADVISOR” and “ENGINEERING SPECIALIST ADVISOR,” with listed salaries generally ranging from about $100,000 to $115,000.

The database also shows that FedEx filed H-1B applications with listed start dates in Texas cities such as Plano during periods when the company was also reporting layoffs in those same regions. It is not immediately clear which of those applications were ultimately approved, as filings do not always result in approvals or hires.

At the same time, FedEx has been cutting hundreds of U.S. jobs, including in North Texas.

In November 2025, the company disclosed in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification letter that it would eliminate 856 positions at a Coppell warehouse as part of a permanent shutdown scheduled to be completed by April 29, 2026. A company spokesman said the closure was driven “solely by our customer’s decision to transition its business to a new location that will be managed by a new third-party logistics provider,” according to the letter published in the Texas WARN database and reported at the time by The Dallas Express.

Those layoffs followed other job cuts across the region, including 305 positions eliminated at a Fort Worth facility earlier in 2025 and an additional 131 layoffs reported at Garland and Plano locations.

FedEx representatives reportedly told state officials that affected employees would receive wages and benefits through their last day and that some workers could be eligible for other roles within the company.

Texas is not the only state affected.

In August, the company reported plans to lay off 611 workers in Memphis after an auto parts manufacturing client moved operations out of state. Additional closures or reductions at FedEx ship centers were reported during 2025 in Kentucky, New York, and Pennsylvania, according to various WARN filings and local reports.

FedEx has not publicly linked its federal contract work to either its H-1B hiring patterns or its domestic layoffs.

The Transportation Command contract obligates funding at the individual task-order level and was awarded through a competitive solicitation, the Department of Defense reportedly indicated. Whether and how the contract has influenced FedEx’s broader workforce decisions remains unclear.

A spokesperson for FedEx told DX in an email, “FedEx is committed to offering employees the opportunity to grow and advance in their careers. Doing so helps our team members thrive, and FedEx prosper. Our strategy is centered around recruiting a skilled workforce that meets our unique business needs and hiring the most qualified candidates.”

Sources within the company told DX on background that FedEx has consolidated several related corporate entities in recent years, which accounts for much of the increase in H-1B workers under the Federal Express Corporation mantle. The source added that the jobs the company eliminated are positions for which H-1B workers do not qualify and, in the case of Dallas-Fort Worth Metro area layoffs, the reductions followed the end of certain customer contracts.

H-1B visas are typically reserved for jobs requiring a bachelor’s degree or higher.

H-1B visas have become a political flashpoint in recent months, with Vice President JD Vance telling corporations, “You Might Try Hiring Americans,” per The Dallas Express.

During a recent public comment period on H-1B visa reforms, Fran Rhodes, president of the True Texas Project, called for the program to be abolished amid concerns about abuse and underpayment of American workers. “The program is riddled with fraud and abuse, and puts American workers at a disadvantage, while creating a financial advantage for the companies hiring foreign workers at a lower pay scale,” Rhodes wrote.