ALLENTOWN: A cargo plane emblazoned with “Prime Air” descended from an empty sky at Lehigh Valley International Airport on Tuesday, ninety minutes from the bustle of New York City, loaded with crates of goods during the peak holiday shopping season.
It is one of 40 jets leased by Amazon.com Inc. for a new cargo service to meet delivery demand from the retail giant’s customers. Exclusive payload data reviewed by Reuters and interviews with airport officials around the country show that Prime Air planes are flying nearly full, but with lightweight loads, taking away valued business from FedEx Corp. and United Parcel Service Inc.
Expanding into transportation, from trucks to planes, is one of Amazon’s most important endeavors, as it strives to lure new customers with fast shipping while keeping costs under control. The world’s largest online retailer is sending more packages, more often, and later in the day to serve its estimated 35 million to more than 50 million US members of Amazon Prime, a service that promises two-day shipping for $99 per year.
Bulky boxes with goods once purchased in stores, like toilet paper, are a revenue driver at UPS and FedEx. That is in part because they now are charging customers increasingly by boxes’ volume rather than weight. Shipping its own big, light packages is helping Amazon dodge those rising fees.
To date, Amazon has only said it leased the planes to speed up shipping and to backstop cargo partners during the holiday season. FedEx and UPS have delivered items late for Christmas in recent years.
“Our own delivery efforts are needed to supplement that capacity rather than replace it,” Amazon spokeswoman Kelly Cheeseman told Reuters. She declined to comment on eluding cargo airline fees.
Amazon’s planes fly to at least 10 airports across the United States, supplying its warehouses nearby. Officials at four airports said Amazon’s flights are operating near capacity but landing with lower-than-average weight — meaning it is placing low-density shipments inside the jets.
Amazon aircraft on a monthly basis handled only between 37 percent and 52 percent of their maximum loads by weight, according to an analysis of cargo, capacity and landing data from the four airports, with supplementary information from tracking website FlightAware.com. By contrast, FedEx and UPS were at 53 percent and 56 percent capacity, respectively, according to US Transportation Department data for the year ended September 2016, excluding weight carried for free.
Flight data shows another way that Amazon is departing from cargo companies’ road map in an attempt of its top goal: Rapid delivery.
Using FlightAware.com and similar websites, Reuters tracked the schedules of Amazon contractors and verified with airports which flights were on behalf of the retailer.
Many of the company’s eastbound flights leave the states of Washington and California unusually late at night: Its flight from Stockton to Wilmington, Ohio departs close to 2 a.m. Pacific Time (10:00 GMT), for instance. FedEx instead schedules most eastbound service no later than 9 p.m. (5:00 GMT) to ensure arrival at its Memphis, Tennessee hub in time for sorting packages overnight.
The difference is that cargo airlines stop at airport hubs so they can fill up planes easily with boxes from many origins. Amazon does this much less.
But flying without a stopover is faster, helping Amazon cut shipping times from Prime’s two-day standard, to a day or even hours. Scheduling later departures has an advantage, too.
“Most people have a tendency to order packages when they are home” from work, said Brian Clancy, managing director of advisory firm Logistics Capital & Strategy LLC. Amazon is “waiting for the orders.”
Amazon also saves time by flying to remote locations like Lehigh Valley, which are near cities and its warehouses but have little traffic. Expectations are for Amazon to stretch well beyond Lehigh Valley and the existing airports Prime Air serves.
Amazon starts flexing muscle in new space
Amazon starts flexing muscle in new space
Private sector dynamism driving labor market growth in Saudi Arabia — landmark report
RIYADH: A “structural shift” in the Saudi economy has led to the share of citizens employed in the private sector reaching 52.8 percent, surpassing the 51.4 percent target, according to a landmark report.
Prepared in collaboration with the Global Labor Market Conference, World Bank Group and the Kingdom’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development, the release titled “A Decade of Progress,” offers an analytical overview of the nation’s job market transformation over the past decade.
Figures as of the second quarter of 2025 showed the Kingdom was not only ahead of its target for the year for the share of Saudis working in the private sector, but only 5.5 percentage points away from the Saudi Vision 2030 goal of 58.3 percent.
The analysis also highlights a structural shift in the role of the private sector in Saudi Arabia’s job market, particularly among women.
Strengthening the private sector and enhancing women’s participation in the workforce is a crucial goal outlined in the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 agenda, as the nation is steadily pursuing its economic diversification efforts by reducing its dependence on crude revenues.
“The private sector is now one of the driving forces behind new job growth in Saudi Arabia, in line with its economic diversification vision. Employment ratios increased as inactive individuals moved into jobs, driving a notable drop in Saudi unemployment and expanding the productive workforce,” said Cristobal Ridao-Cano, practice manager for social protection and labor in the Middle East and North Africa, Pakistan, and Afghanistan at the World Bank.
He added: “The knowledge attained from Saudi Arabia’s transformation model can be transferred to other countries.”
The Kingdom has the goal of increasing the share of Saudi citizens employed in the private sector to 58.3 percent by the end of this decade.
According to the report, the share of employment in micro-enterprises increased from 6 percent in 2015 to 26 percent of total employment by 2025, underscoring the sector’s vitality.
This improvement was supported by a sustained decline in labor market mismatch over the decade, and an increase in education-to-job matching from 41 percent in 2015 to 62 percent in 2025, reducing skills-related barriers to employment.
“Labor market frictions also declined, reflected in a notable rise in job-to-job transitions and increased labor mobility toward private sector firms,” added the study.
According to the analysis, the Kingdom witnessed a notable expansion in the productive labor force, driven by an increase in participation to 67.1 percent by 2025.
Saudi Arabia’s overall unemployment rate recorded a significant decline, reaching 2.8 percent by mid-2025, as increasing numbers of economically inactive individuals moved directly into occupations.
Female employment increased from 11 percent in 2015 to 32 percent in 2025, while work among mothers rose from 8 percent to 45 percent over the same period.
The employment rate in the category of youth, aged between 18 and 24, increased from 10 percent in 2015 to 33 percent in 2025, while the share of youth not in education, employment, or training declined from 40 percent to 25 percent during the same period.
The report also highlighted a significant shift in social norms and job search preferences.
From 2015 to 2025, the share of individuals unwilling to work declined from 49 percent to 12 percent, while the preference gap between the public and private sectors narrowed considerably.
The share of jobseekers who were exclusively seeking public sector jobs fell from 60 percent to 10 percent for men, and from 48 percent to 22 percent for women.
A large share of jobseekers now target private sector opportunities, reflecting stronger alignment between work preferences and actual job search behavior.
“Social norms related to women’s employment also shifted substantially. Acceptance of women working in mixed-gender workplaces has increased, directly contributing to higher female employment in private sector companies, expanding opportunities available to women, and strengthening their integration into the labor market,” added the report.
