{"id":70421,"date":"2026-06-11T14:31:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T14:31:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/70421\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T14:31:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T14:31:13","slug":"ai-productivity-gains-precede-expeditors-uncharacteristic-layoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/70421\/","title":{"rendered":"AI Productivity Gains Precede Expeditors’ Uncharacteristic Layoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFreight<\/a> forwarder Expeditors International<\/a> will cut 230 employees by the end of the year in a shift from the Washington-based company\u2019s longstanding no-layoff policy.<\/p>\n

\n\tA Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) filed with the Washington State Employment Security Department on Monday lists separations starting Aug. 8, across five Expeditors offices in Seattle, Bellevue, Federal Way, Lynnwood and Airway Heights.<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to the WARN notice, the freight<\/a> forwarder is restructuring its U.S. global technology department, with all cuts expected to be finalized by Dec. 31. Separations are expected to be permanent.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Seattle office will see the most cuts, with 68 employees getting notice of their termination. Another 66 were cut from the Federal Way office, while 59 working in Lynwood got their walking papers.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe staff cuts would represent 15.4 percent of the company\u2019s information systems branch as of March 31, 2026. The company employed 1,498 workers within the branch to close out the first quarter, up from 1,358 staff the year prior. In total, Expeditors employed roughly 20,361 workers, so the cuts represent 1.1 percent of the company\u2019s total staff.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis action is not expected to result in the relocation or contracting out of the Company\u2019s operations or the affected employees\u2019 positions,\u201d said Courtney Hawkins, senior vice president and chief information officer of Expeditors International, in the WARN notice. \u201cAffected employees will continue to receive any pay and benefits due to them as a Company employee up until the termination of their employment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHawkins runs the information systems branch for the logistics<\/a> provider.<\/p>\n

\n\tPositions impacted included software developers, quality assurance engineers, project managers and business analysts, among others.<\/p>\n

\n\tA report from GeekWire highlighted a discrepancy in the company\u2019s website that signaled a change to its internal policies regarding layoffs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs recently as January, Expeditors\u2019 online corporate history page credited \u201cour no layoff policy\u201d for making 2010 the company\u2019s \u201cbest year to date,\u201d according to a version of the page captured by the Internet Archive\u2019s \u201cWayback Machine.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA snapshot on the site taken on May 11 indicated that the phrase was since amended to call it \u201cour short-term no layoff policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to various reports, Expeditors did not conduct layoffs<\/a> during high-stress economic periods including the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, the Covid-19 pandemic and wider tech job cuts<\/a> after the Federal Reserve began increasing interest rates throughout 2022.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe company has not given a reason for the policy changes, but highlighted increased productivity across the business in its first quarter earnings release on May 5.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the time, David Hackett, senior vice president and chief financial officer at Expeditors, attributed the improvements to artificial intelligence<\/a> deployments.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWith headcount sequentially flat versus the prior quarter, coupled with our revenue and margin growth, we meaningfully increased our productivity from the fourth quarter of 2025 as our operating efficiency achieved our 30 percent historical target,\u201d said Hackett. \u201cIn 2025, we made strategic investments in headcount aimed at higher-growth opportunities, particularly in customs brokerage, as well as essential investments in technology, including artificial intelligence<\/a>. We are starting to achieve benefits from these investments, which are helping to drive our productivity gains.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHackett noted that the gains were easing cost increases for Expeditors for a second sequential quarter, with operating expenses, excluding transportation-related costs, increasing less than one percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2025.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the company\u2019s annual report, Expeditors says it is in \u201cthe early days in the deployment of AI\u201d and continues to work to see where it can be applied most beneficially.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe are dedicated to teaching our employees how to best utilize AI technologies, with groups creating their own agents and using tools in various areas of our business to gain efficiency and improve effectiveness,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n

\n\tLast year, CargoWise and E2Open parent WiseTech Global<\/a> announced a nearly 30 percent culling of its staff through 2027, overtly tying the job cuts<\/a> to its deployments of AI technologies. Freight booking technology Freightos<\/a> said March it was cutting 15 percent of its staff in a restructuring to cut costs, with the firm alluding to AI adoption within the company playing a role.<\/p>\n

\n\tThird-party logistics<\/a> provider giant C.H. Robinson, which has publicly championed its incorporation of AI technologies across its business over the past year, saw its own employment total dwindle 19 percent from 14,990 employees in the first quarter of 2024 to 12,085 in the fourth quarter of 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Freight forwarder Expeditors International will cut 230 employees by the end of the year in a shift from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,39058,2923,1297,7901],"class_list":["post-70421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-freight","tag-job-cuts","tag-layoffs","tag-logistics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}