In 43 days, barring any-last minute deals between then and now, Great Britain will effectively leave the European Union. Because of this, many international companies are positioning themselves — both in terms of their offices and their processes — in a way to avoid the least amount of tariffs and other cross-country issues that are a non-factor with the U.K. still in the EU..

One of those companies is DHL ($XETRA:DPW), the German-based logistics company, which has ramped up hiring in Customs-related positions as recently as September, according to job listings data from its website.

The largest land, air, and sea mail operator slowly hired more people since 2016 up until a post-Christmas 2017 dip, then ramped up hiring once more until it peaked in mid-September. 

This pattern is similar to hiring for jobs that were explicitely stated as "customs" or "TSA" positions.

However, there is more to the story than just the raw numbers; when looking specifically at job titles within the data, some are for positions that have multiple openings listed within the title.

Title
Number of Individual Job Openings
Security and Operational Resilience, TSA Program Screening Specialist 8
Speditionskaufmann (m/w/d) Zollspezialist / Customs Operations Specialist 3
Customs Clerk 2
Speditionskaufmann (m/w/d) Zollspezialist / Customs Clearance Specialist 2
Backline Customs Supervisor, Colnbrook 1
Customs Agent (m/w) / Sachbearbeiter Zoll (m/w) 1
Customs Clearance Support Agent 1
Customs Agent Talent Network (E) 1
Customs Operations Manager 1
Customs Clerk x 15 1

One job opening, for Customs Clerks in Dover, England, lists "x 15" within the title, meaning that the company is actually looking for 15 individual clerks within that one opening.

As pointed out by companies in the past, a job listing could have multiple openings within it (i.e. store clerks in a supermarket), so usually, looking at just the number of individual openings is the best estimate we can get about company hiring patterns. But thanks to DHL's system, we're able to see that they are still looking for dozens of people to help shipments clear customs and the United States' TSA. And, specifically in Brighton, a seaside town in South Britain near the European mainland, DHL is making sure it has enough people to deal with a change in international trade laws, should Great Britain split from the European Union without a favorable deal in place.

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