Holiday hiring expected to be slow

WASHINGTON – Competition for holiday retail jobs could be fierce this year, according to several recent surveys, as stores cautiously hire in the face of flatlining sales and budget-conscious customers.

Stores typically begin bringing on temporary workers in October to handle the crush of Christmas shoppers. But several recent surveys predict hiring will be slow this year – when it occurs at all. According to consulting firm Hay Group, about 40 percent of retailers plan to reduce the number of people hired by a quarter. Meanwhile, the growing unemployment rate has prompted more people to fill out applications.

“Retailers are planning for a challenging Christmas season,” said Craig Rowley, vice president of Hay’s retail practice. “That said, retailers have their fingers crossed that they are wrong.”

According to government data, retail jobs account for about 11 percent of the U.S. work force. Over the past year, the industry has shed nearly 600,000 positions as retailers grappled with declining sales. That has helped push the national unemployment rate to 9.8 percent.

The job losses have created a vicious cycle in which retailers curtail hiring because of poor sales, and shoppers cut back spending because they fear for their jobs.

“We are in a period of flux, no question,” said John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement consulting firm.

The vortex landed last year when the economy crumbled just before the start of the holiday shopping season. The stock markets plunged, and consumers clamped their wallets shut, sending retail sales into a tailspin. Stores were stuck with shelves of merchandise ordered long before the financial crisis, but they were able to cut costs by slashing their work forces.

Retailers chopped the number of new hires last year by 47 percent to 384,300, the smallest number in two decades, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The average number of staffers added during the holidays is 680,590.