Holiday hiring: Will majors up part-time staffing?

The answer, in short, is yes. Holiday retail hiring has improved every year since 2008 and it seems that trend will continue this year, with major retailers planning to hire either the same amount or more seasonal employees than last year.

Brecken Branstrator brecken.branstrator@nationaljeweler.com

Macy's Inc. is one of a number of major U.S. retailers with plans to hire more part-time holiday help this year.

New York--Employment gains and increased consumer spending are expected to boost the need for seasonal workers across many industries this year, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

The company said that holiday hiring in retail has improved every year since 2008, when the recession led to a 55 percent decline in the hiring of seasonal employees.

It seems that trend will continue this year, with many of the U.S.’s major retailers reporting that they will hire either the same amount or more seasonal employees to support sales in stores and online this year.

Macy’s announced Monday that it would be hiring for about 86,000 seasonal positions at Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s stores, call centers, distribution centers and online fulfillment centers across the country this year.

This is a 4 percent increase from the approximately 83,000 that the company hired during the 2013 holiday season.

Macy’s said that its seasonal workforce especially has grown in the company’s online fulfillment centers to support the increase in sales generated by its omnichannel business strategy. This year, nearly 10,000 of the 86,000 total seasonal positions will be based in the direct-to-consumer fulfillment “megacenters” and product-specific fulfillment centers.

Walmart also will hire more seasonal employees this year than it did last year. The retailer said that it plans to hire 60,000 seasonal associates in 2014, nearly 10 percent more than it hired in 2013.

The company also said that nearly 25 percent of those employees will stay on in a permanent role after the holiday season is finished.

Kohl’s announced that it anticipates hiring more than 67,000 associates nationwide this holiday season, a 15 percent increase compared with last year. Hiring began this month and most jobs will be filled by mid-November.

Meanwhile, Target and J.C. Penney reported numbers that are in line with 2013.

Target said that it plans to hire 70,000 seasonal employees this year, the same as it did last year. A J.C. Penney spokesperson said the retailer plans to hire approximately 35,000 seasonal associates for the holiday season, a staffing projection that also is in line with last year’s hiring levels.

Sears Holdings would not disclose to National Jeweler the number of holiday hires or projections around seasonal hiring, saying only that each Sears and Kmart bases its needs on what it’s anticipating for that particular store.

John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas said

Banner will be right here …

in a statement, “The last two years saw holiday hiring return to pre-recession levels. This year, we could see hiring return to levels not seen since the height of the dot-com boom. Holiday spending will undoubtedly benefit from the fact that payrolls are increasing by an average of 215,000 new workers per month so far this year. That translates into more people with jobs, which means more holiday spending money.”

But, he added that since many of the gains this season are coming from a boost in e-commerce and omnichannel business, traditional retail stores without e-commerce should perhaps remain hesitant.

“Despite the positive indicators, an increase in holiday hiring is by no means guaranteed, particularly among traditional brick-and-mortar retailers,” he said.

Brecken Branstratoris the senior editor, gemstones at National Jeweler, covering sourcing, pricing and other developments in the colored stone sector.