Will the Majors Hire More Seasonal Workers This Year?

Gray & Christmas Inc. said in its recent outlook that it expects more than 700,000 retail job gains this holiday season.

This means retail hiring is predicted to remain almost flat from a year ago, when holiday hiring saw 738,000 positions filled during the final three months of the year, a 1 percent decrease from 2014, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Target announced mid-September that it would hire an additional 70,000 seasonal team members across its store locations, marking the fourth year in a row that it’s doing so.

Meanwhile, Kohl’s said it would hire more than 69,000 associates across its stores and distribution and e-commerce fulfillment centers, about even with the 67,000 it hired last year.

Retailer J.C. Penney will hire 40,000 employees during this year’s holiday season--38,000 in its retail locations and the other 2,000 taking care of its online orders.

This is up from last year’s 30,000 holiday hires, which the company said is to allow its managers more control of the workforce, scheduling people as needed. J.C. Penney also said it is interested in keeping some of the seasonal employees as permanent ones after the holiday season is over, though it didn’t specify how many.

Amazon said it will create more than 120,000 seasonal positions across its network of fulfillment centers, sorting centers and customer service sites in the United States, up 20 percent from the 100,000 workers the company hired last year.

Macy’s will hire for 83,000 positions at its Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s stores, call centers, distribution and fulfillment centers across the country, which is slightly less than the 86,000 it hired for the 2015 holiday season.

Shift to behind-the-scenes
Challenger, Gray & Christmas also noted that while seasonal retail jobs remain flat, there has been a marked increase in seasonal job gains in other sectors.

The one with the biggest increase in recent years has been transportation and warehousing, “as more and more holiday shopping is done online,” the company said.

This reflects a larger trend of the transition of many seasonal jobs from being in-store positions to positions in fulfillment centers, distribution and customer service.

About 15,000 of Macy’s 120,000 seasonal jobs will be based in direct-to-consumer fulfillment facilities to support sales generated by its omnichannel business strategy, up from the 3,000 positions that were designated as such last year.

Target said that it will hire 7,500 team members for distribution and fulfillment facilities for the holiday season, about 1,000 more than it did last year for those positions. These employees will help restock stores while also fulfilling the high volume of online orders expected this year.

Challenger, Gray & Christmas also noted that seasonal hiring isn’t limited to retail or retail-related industries.

As more Americans give experiential gifts instead of material things, this means there also are more seasonal employment opportunities at places such as theaters, restaurants and other entertainment venues.