The company reported that on December 12 it shipped more packages than any other day in the company’s history… around 17 million packages. That marks a 10% jump from its busiest day last year, and twice as many shipments as the company typically makes a day.

A big reason why FedEx is seeing such a busy shipping holiday season is the growing popularity of online shopping at sites such as Amazon.com (AMZN). Consumers are showing that they are still willing to spend, but perhaps they are shopping smarter, and spending more time online doing research and looking for the best possible deal before making their holiday purchases.

America’s other major shipper, UPS (UPS) also has reported that its shipping volume has grown compared to last year. UPS does far greater volume than FDX, and last year it had one day where shipments exceeded 25 million units. This year the company expects to see at least 5 days with such volume.

Whether or not the boost in shipments will relate to a strong holiday season for retailers remains to be seen, but it is definitely a positive sign.

According to the Commerce Department, the economy grew at 3.1% during the fourth quarter, which is higher than analysts had been expecting to see. Going into today’s report analysts had been expecting to see revised GDP output of 3.0%.

Last month the Commerce Department made a preliminary forecast of 2.8% GDP growth during the fourth quarter.

Most analysts agree that GDP has continued to grow in the first quarter, but rising oil prices over the past month will probably prevent us from seeing the same sort of growth that the economy enjoyed during the fourth quarter.

A key ingredient to the current economic recovery is consumer spending. During the final 3 months of 2010 consumer spending rose 4.0%, which is the most it has risen during a 3 month period since the fourth quarter 2006.

In reaction to the news the DOW is currently up 0.3%, the NASDAQ has gained 0.3%, and the S&P is up 0.2%.

According to a poll by National Association for Business Economics, 80% of economists that it polled stated that they believe the recession has ended and the economy is once again expanding.

While it is encouraging to hear that the economy may be starting to expand, we still have to pay attention to two factors that are going to keep a recovery moving slowly: high unemployment and a large federal debt.

Unemployment is what is on the minds of most Americans, the majority of which have either felt the pain of losing their job, or know someone that has. September unemployment was 9.8%, and is expected to continue to climb, and will probably break through the 10% mark earlier next year. Until we start to see those numbers fall it will be hard to convince anyone that the economy is back in good shape.

Analysts expect to see unemployment break through 10% in the first quarter of next year, and then slowly start to recede back down towards 9.5% by the end of 2010. Even if we do see unemployment fall to “only” 9.5% that still means that there is going to be a lot of pain out there as American’s continue to worry about the jobs. The recovery is not really going to take off until consumer confidence and spending start to return to normal, and it will be hard for that to happen while nearly 1 out of 10 people are looking for work.

The markets all traded relatively flat today despite the encouraging news.