Over the past year, unemployment has been on the near-constant rise. Every time I turn around it seems as though some other company is cutting 20% of its work force. Many of the larger companies, however, are doing something to try to ease the layoffs before actually being forced to simply fire the workers.

They’re offering buyouts.

These buyouts, depending on the company, are typically a few thousand dollars ($10,000-$25,000) and are a one time payment. With the payout, the employee is immediately terminated and he or she is free from any contract that they might have with the company.

However, even when GM decided to offer buyouts to some of its employees that included a free car, employees weren’t taking the offer and instead were opting for the risk of not knowing whether they would be fired without a buyout or not. Many GM workers who could have taken the buyouts were fired with no money to help cushion the blow.

Most recently, the United States Postal Service has decided to offer a $15,000 buyout to anyone who wants to quit willingly. The offer extends to those seeking retirement or early retirement, a total of about 30,000 employees. They would get $10,000 now and the other $5,000 in October 2010. I’m sure that many of these people will not end up taking the buyout.

The problem is, many of these people know that their job is worth more than the buyout being offered. There aren’t enough jobs to go around right now and if they decide to quit and take the buyout, then they are much less likely to be able to find work again especially because these are the people who are eligible for retirement. They are the ones who will end up scrimping and saving because they can’t keep their electricity on if they burn through their savings.

In some ways, I don’t blame the people who decide to not take the buyout, but on the other hand, many of these people will be terminated without any financial compensation of any kind. The buyouts do leave a bitter taste in your mouth, don’t they?

UPS has announced that it believes that it will have to deliver nearly 22 million packages on December 21st – it’s busiest day of the year this year. This represents a 40% increase over normal daily volume.

It also announced that between Thanksgiving and Christmas, it expects to deliver around 400 million packages in the United States and abroad. The increase in shipping over the holiday season also leads to more employment. UPS is expecting to hire 50,000 seasonal workers starting soon to help handle the extra holiday volume.

The media watches these expectations from UPS as well as FedEx as a measure of how well the retail sector of the economy is doing.

If you are expecting to wait until the last minute to ship something, you can ship something by air with UPS on December 23rd and it will still get there by Christmas Eve.

FedEx has said that it expects December 14th to be its busiest day of the year and that it will ship 13 million packages on that day. FedEx does, however, have a partnership with the United States Postal Service, where FedEx ships to the post office and the postal worker delivers the package to the buyer.

If you were going to ship with FedEx, if you want your package there by Christmas, you have to ship it by Dec. 17th for ground service and December 23rd for Express service.

Of course, you can also ship with the USPS. I am unsure if it has guaranteed delivery for anything other than its overnight packages however. I do know that Priority Mail is supposed to be 2-3 day delivery and I haven’t been disappointed so far in that service.

It’s looking more and more likely for that 5 day week delivery schedule for the United States Postal Service after it posted an almost $2 billion loss today.

The Postal Service says the majority of the loss is the result of what it calls an unprecedented decline in mail volume. It moved 43.8 billion pieces of mail last quarter, down nearly 15 percent from a year ago.

The Postal Service has now lost money for 10 of the last 11 quarters, and warns of a year-end cash shortfall of as much as $1.5 billion.

The proposed decrease in one day of work equals out to about 33,000 lay offs in 58 million saved hours without having to actually lay off any workers.

If the postal service is hemorrhaging money this badly, perhaps it is time to start a 5 day week. Today all I had in the mail was a postcard from the post office, so there are certainly days where the mail doesn’t have to run.