Holiday Hiring Reflects Change in Consumer Shopping

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Holiday Hiring: Let’s learn who is hiring more and why!

Welcome back to the eCommerce Forum!

Retailers are looking to hire now that the holiday season is approaching. While many major retailers will need cashiers and sales people, they won’t need as many as you think. John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, says that there is a shift from retail to eCommerce. He also says that the number of customer-facing roles are dropping as a result. The following will explore holiday sales trends and how they affect hiring:

eCommerce Companies Are Hiring More People for the Holidays

According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), the retail industry’s eCommerce holiday sales will grow 7-10 percent over last year. That’s impressive because more than 46% of shopping was done online in 2015. As a result, Amazon created more than 100,000 seasonal jobs. This is a 25% increase from Amazon’s previous year. Furthermore, the number of people hired in transportation, distribution centers and warehouses is also growing because of eCommerce holiday sales. While eCommerce is doing great, brick & mortar stores are not.

Brick& & Mortar Holiday Hiring is Declining

The NRF predicts that overall holiday sales will grow just 3.4%. They also say that this reflects poor growth in the traditional retail channels. As brick & mortar sales stagnate, retailers will hire less people. For example, retailers added almost 787,000 employees in the final months of 2013. That was down 4% to 2014’s 755,000 and fell another 1.2% in 2015. The following are some of the major retailers affected by the consumer switch to eCommerce:

– Kohl’s– claims it is hiring 69,000 for the 2016 holiday season. This is only a slight increase from the 67,000 last year.
– Macy’s– closed over 100 stores recently so their holiday hiring number will be significantly low.
– Target– plans to hire more than 70,000 seasonal store employees. This is the same holiday hiring number as the past 4 years.

In order for these brick & mortar stores to compete with major eCommerce companies like Amazon, they need to build up their online presence. Today’s consumer wants retailers to come to them, and they want retailers to specialize in exactly what they want. Additionally, relatively new eCommerce features–like eGifting–are giving consumers more power in how they gift and how they receive. If retailers can learn how to utilize eCommerce, their sales will increase and so will their holiday hiring rates.