Economic recovery isn't translating into greater retail employment
December 6, 2004
When Gabrielle Wentworth was heading toward a new life in Seattle, she knew the job situation was tight, even for college graduates. She figured she could get a seasonal job for the holidays to tide herself over.
"I applied everywhere because I got nervous about the rent," said Wentworth, who graduated with a degree in sociology from the University of Notre Dame. After hitting up numerous shops, Wentworth found the perfect fit at Levi's Original Store in downtown Seattle.
Others may not have been as fortunate. With the nation's economy steadily expanding and the labor market strengthening, retail job seekers might have expected to land seasonal jobs with relative ease this year.
But as holiday sales and extended store hours kick in, thousands of would-be cashiers and gift wrappers just might find the job market tougher than they had anticipated.
"It is pretty competitive," said Melissa Kelley, an assistant store manager for Coldwater Creek Inc.'s premium flagship store in Seattle. "At the beginning of the hiring season, we were getting 25 applicants a week. Around Thanksgiving, we took the hiring sign down because we realized we were well-staffed, but we still get about five applicants a week."
That particular store location has a permanent staff of between 30 and 35 people, but managers beefed it up by 15 hires this holiday season, according to David Gunter, spokesman for Coldwater Creek.
On the one hand, free-spending upper-income households are expected to boost the fortunes of luxury retailers. However, there is widespread caution about the willingness of low- and middle-income consumers to spend robustly.
Slow-growing income levels, high gas prices and increased health costs have dampened the optimism of bellwether mass retailers, even the nation's biggest discounter Wal-Mart Stores.
On balance, the vital year-end shopping season is expected to be good, but not great. The National Retail Federation has forecast holiday spending will total $220 billion this year, a 4.5 percent gain from last year. That pace would mark a decline from last year's 5.1 percent gain over the previous year's holiday spending.
"This year, you're seeing small gains on a year-over-year basis in retail jobs. A year ago, there were actually some small declines," said Michael Niemira, chief economist and research director at the International Council of Shopping Centers, a trade group in New York City.
As of October, the month when stores typically do most of their hiring for the year-end rush, the number of U.S. shopping center-related jobs was up slightly from October 2003, to about 12.5 million jobs, the shopping council's research showed. This year's October jobs figure was down 1.7 percent from the October 2000 level of 12.71 million.
"Last year, retailers didn't want to beef up the stores that much," Niemira said. This year, part-timers might be asked to work more hours than last year's workers. "The number of bodies (tends to be) set before the season begins. The flexible component is the number of hours worked."
Aside from spending forecasts, there are other, less obvious factors affecting the availability of holiday retail jobs.
One is supply and demand: For the better part of four years, widespread corporate cutbacks have sent laid-off workers scrambling to find new jobs. The resulting flood of applicants has given retailers a steady stream of high-quality workers.
Many of those workers, still afloat in the job market, have been eager to return to seasonal retail jobs. Their presence has made those positions less available to inexperienced newcomers, national retailers and industry experts say.
"Every year, we bring back the best after evaluating our holiday hires (from the previous year). We keep track of our top employees, and if you're one, we will contact you and offer you the same position," said Kristin Peaks, a spokeswoman for RadioShack Corp. of Fort Worth, Texas. "We tend to look for experience."
By early last week, RadioShack had received more than 51,000 applications for about 10,000 temporary holiday jobs in nearly 7,000 stores.
Even though the electronics retailer plans to hire 25 percent more holiday workers than it did a year ago, thousands of those jobs were filled well before novice job seekers submitted their applications.
Jobs might seem a bit scarcer this year because lean economic times have taught retailers to do more with less, said Andy Graves, retail analyst with Pacific Growth Equities in San Francisco.
Also, the growth of online retailing means that some shoppers spend less time in stores than they once did.
Retailers in the past five years have invested millions of dollars in inventory-management and profit-maximization software. Mass discounters such as Target and Wal-Mart led the charge, and just about everybody had to follow to remain competitive, Graves said.
The software helps stores not only buy the right kinds and volumes of merchandise but also to hire the optimum number of employees.
Bon-Macy's, the Seattle-based part of Federated Department Stores, uses an online application process. Bon-Macy's spokesperson Kimberly Reason said: "In the past, we would received referrals for holiday hiring, but getting the right applicant who had the commitment was difficult.
"This year, we have received many more applications, which we can process much more quickly to get more qualified workers."
In the future, workers like Wentworth, whose true love is the non-profit sector, may find it more difficult to get a retail job. But this Christmas, she's sitting pretty in a new pair of jeans.
San Francisco Chronicle reporter Jenny Strasburg contributed information on national retail hiring.
Email This Page!