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Supply Chain by the Numbers

April 10, 2026

Supply Chain by the Numbers for April 10, 2026

US Fertility Rates Fell again in 2025. Demand for ”Shallow-bay” Warehouse Space. DHL Investing Big in Data Center Logistics. USPS Keeping Most of it Amazon Business


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53.1
That was the US fertility rate in 2025, according to a report this week from the National Center for Health Statistics. The fertility rate measures the number of births per 1,000 women of childbearing age. That was down a little from 53.8 seen in 2024. The 2025 number extended almost two decades of declines in the measure. The New York Times says the fertility rate has been falling since 2007, a trend that has become something of a demographic mystery. The drop began during the Great Recession, and experts first attributed it to the sharp economic downturn, following a common historical pattern. But the rate has continued to drop, and demographers have been trying to understand why. Demography is destiny, as the saying goes.

50%+

That is how much on average lease rates are up for so-called “shallow-bay” warehouse space since 2010, according to an analysis by real estate firm CBRE released late last week. What is a shallow-bay warehouse space? According to CBRE, the term refers to buildings under 50,000 sq. ft. with clear heights between 14 and 28 feet – and demand for such space is growing. To what should be no surprise, driving the growth largely involved companies in ecommerce and looking for a staging ground for fast last mile deliveries. Nearly half of shallow-bay inventory was built prior to 1980 and more than 80% was built before 2000. Properties built since 2010 account for only 5% of total inventory CBRE finds.



7 Million
That is about the amount of warehouse space in square footage that 3PL DHL is opening around the globe to support the needs of data center operators, according to an article this week in the Wall Street Journal. The facilities will offer services including assembling and configuring equipment in data-center racks and transporting the racks to data centers. “From the time that a shovel hits the ground to build the structure, all the way through the life cycle, we are there to help support,” said Jesse Laver, vice president of growth and data-center strategy and operations at DHL Supply Chain. DHL Supply Chain is betting that hyperscalers, data-center operators and suppliers will want to outsource more of their logistics operations to instead focus on their ambitious expansion plans and developing the latest AI models.

20%

That is how much of its current Amazon business that the USPS will lose in a tentative agreement reached this week between the two companies. While that’s a bit of a financial haircut for the postal service, if approved the deal would preserve guaranteed revenue for the USPS, which relies on Amazon, its biggest customer, for billions of dollars in income and has long struggled to stabilize its finances. The New York Times reports that Amazon relies on the Postal Service to deliver packages around the United States, including for the often tricky step of getting items from local warehouses to a customer’s home, known as last-mile delivery. Details on the proposed contract, including the price Amazon will pay per parcel, have not been revealed. The agreement would still have the Postal Service deliver more than 1 billion packages for Amazon a year. The Postal Service currently delivers 1.7 billion packages a year total, David Steiner, the postmaster general, said in an interview with Reuters in December.

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