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 2022, the U.S. Transportation Command selected FedEx and two other firms 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 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.