Seasonal Holiday Hiring Expected To Stay Flat
Seasonal retail hiring is expected to stay about the same as last year, with any increases coming in the form of small gains, retail groups said.
And some of the most popular stores for holiday shopping, such as Best Buy and Toys R Us, are scaling back their Christmastime workforces.
Retailers hire an influx of employees during the holiday season — often doubling their employee counts — to accommodate an uptick in traffic and sales. Many have been quickly recruiting and training new hires during the last few weeks.
But this year, with economists and analysts predicting only a modest year-over-year increase in holiday sales, many merchants are hiring conservatively because they don't want to risk an excess of underutilized workers. The growth of online shopping has also decreased the need for hordes of employees in bricks-and-mortar stores.
"Over-hiring would be just like getting way too much merchandise on your shelves," said John A. Challenger, chief executive of global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Retailers "are trying to keep their costs down, so I think what we'll see is companies adopting strategies like giving their current workers more hours, having a second call-in workforce that they can call if the traffic is better than their forecasts."
That's a reversal from last year, when many retailers swelled their workforces in anticipation of a healthy holiday season, leading to a 27% increase in seasonal hires from 2009, the consulting firm said.
This year, Macy's Inc. plans to hire roughly 78,000 seasonal associates for its Macy's and Bloomingdale's stores, call centers, distribution warehouses and online fulfillment centers, about a 4% rise from last year's holiday season.
Kohl's Corp. is hiring more than 40,000 seasonal associates nationwide, up about 5% from the same period in 2010 to accommodate new stores that opened this year.
After hiring more than 92,000 seasonal team members nationwide last year, Target Corp. is planning to hire "slightly more than that" this year, a company spokesman said. J.C. Penney Co. expects to add 37,000 workers, up from 30,000 last year.