Note: “Weak consumer spending” refers to store expectations before the season started. Consumer spending ended up being high which is why Black Friday set a new record
No paywall: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/seasonal-hiring-offers-little-reprieve-for-labor-market-woes-110044972.html
Plenty of Americans are expected to pour into stores and fill online carts this holiday shopping season. Fewer may be able to pick up seasonal work to support that bonanza.
As layoff announcements make waves and the unemployment rate creeps up, the usual holiday hiring spree appears muted this year, with data from multiple sources suggesting that hiring plans may be at their lowest levels in over a decade.
Challenger, Gray & Christmas said in its most recent labor report that seasonal hiring plans through October were at their lowest since the global outplacement firm began tracking them in 2012.
The National Retail Federation, a trade group, also said in a press call earlier this month that while strong consumer spending was expected to persist through the holiday season, plans to bring on extra staff could be at “the lowest level in more than 15 years.” Retailers were expected to bring on 265,000 to 365,000 seasonal workers, compared to 442,000 in 2024.
Interest in seasonal work, though, remains plenty high — up 27% at the end of September compared to a year earlier — as Americans struggle to find employment across the board, according to Cory Stahle, a senior economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab.
Job seekers are competing for listings that are up just 2.7% from a year ago, and still below pre-pandemic levels. (Indeed’s hiring data tracks seasonal positions overall, such as in accounting and ski resorts, rather than restricting seasonal hires strictly to retail, Stahle said.)
“I think it’s very telling that we’re still well below where we were in those seasonal jobs a couple of years ago,” Stahle said. “There are clearly just a lot fewer opportunities overall.”
Retail especially has “just really pulled back,” he said.
h/t callsonreddit