U.S. Retail Industry Update: Not So Unexpected Job Losses Small Compared to 600,000 Holiday Employee Seasonal Hires
The big story in the retail industry recently has been the 38,500 jobs that were trimmed off retail payrolls in September. This, apparently, came as a surprise to just about everybody who labeled the job drop as "unexpected."
After the big Bernanke "recession over" speech, isn't all news about the economy supposed to be positive and aren't all economic indicators supposed to signal expansion? For those who believe that, there will undoubtedly be more "unexpected" numbers to come out of the U.S. retail industry in the last quarter of 2009.
I don't really see what's so unexpected. The 15 million people who don't have jobs are not spending all their free time shopping. If retail sales aren't happening, retail jobs aren't needed. So, retailers are doing temporary hiring for temporary spikes, and instead of hanging onto those employees in the lulls between spending sprees, retail positions are simply being eliminated. The growing stack of resumes sitting on every store manager's desk gives them the confidence that staffing up for the next busy buying spurt will not be much of a problem.
The retail job numbers have been reported and analyzed ad nauseum already, and there's not anything particularly interesting about any of them. If you google "retail jobs" you'll see them all.
Here's what is interesting. If you google "retail hiring" you get an entirely different set of articles which will give you an entirely different picture of what's going on in the job market in general and the retail sector in particular.
The Society of Human Resources Management (SHRM) surveyed HR professionals at more than 500 service-sector companies and found out that 32.5% of them wil be hiring in October.
Robert Half Finance Accounting interviewed senior executives from some of the largest companies in the U.S. and 31% of them said that hiring new employees was their top priority when business conditions improve.
Toys 'R Us has already started hiring the 35,000 workers it will need to staff its 350 mall holiday pop-up stores.
Kohl's will start putting an extra 20 employees in each of its 1,022 stores this month for the holiday season.
CEO Brian Dunn told Business Week that Best Buy will be hiring more seasonal holiday employees this year than it did last year. Apparently the chain thinks that flat-screen televisions, smartphones, and netbooks are going to be this year's big stocking stuffers.
Smaller electronics rival hhgregg apparently is as optimistic as Best Buy because it plans to hire 10% more seasonal employees this year, for a total of 800.
So if you look in one direction at the job market, what you'll see are a huge collection numbers that are both recessing and depressing. If you look in another direction at who's hiring, what you'll see are job openings and hope. And even though the hope is as temporary as the positions, these seasonal jobs will carry thousands of people into a new year, when new 2010 store openings are already being planned.
The Wall Street Journal estimates that there will be about 600,000 people hired for seasonal retail positions this year. That's good news. If all 15 million unemployed people apply for those jobs, though, that will be bad news.
The U.S. retail industry has largely been viewed as the place to go for jobs of last resort. If you can't find the kind of job you really want, you can always work in retail. Obviously that will not be the case this holiday season.
People without retail training or experience will be competing with displaced employees who are genuinely pursuing retail careers. Mediocre retail employees will be competing with chronically unemployed people who are highly-motivated and extremely eager to please. The competition for retail temporary holiday jobs is going to be stiff and job hunters are going to need to bring their "A" game in order to earn a space on anybody's retail team.
More than half a million retail jobs will be filled in the next three months. Landing one of those jobs, though, may take even more salesmanship and skill than the job itself.
No comments yet. Leave a Comment