arranges toys fro the holidays.
Even with the outlook the cheeriest in years for retail sales,
national and local chains are planning to maintain their additional hires at
the same levels as the dismal 2002 holiday shopping season.
Whether that fact results in long checkout lines for customers, or stores
struggling to keep fresh inventory on the shelves remains to be seen. At the
very least, industry forecasts projecting between 3 and 6 percent holiday sales
gains still mean a doubling of last year’s meager 1.5 percent year-over-year
gain, which the Washington, D.C.- based National Retail Federation said was
the lowest in decades.
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According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, retailers added 555,000 jobs
last November and December – up 13 percent from the 490,000 holiday workers
in 2001 but still 100,000 less than the average hires for the three seasons
spanning 1998 to 2000. The hiring story remains nearly identical to a year ago
as most national retailers plan that their staffing levels for 2002 can more
than absorb any spike in consumer activity.
Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, is planning to add around 14,000
seasonal jobs, including cashiers, stockers and sales clerks.
Target Corp. spokeswoman Aimee Sands said her company is looking to again
hire somewhere between 50,000 to 80,000 employees.
Barnes & Noble and Best Buy spokesmen said they have plans to increase
staffing by about 30 percent for the holidays at all of their stores.
The story is the same for local retailers. Yarmouth, Mass.-based Christmas
Tree Shops said they already have most of its 20 percent seasonal hires in place,
close to the same numbers as budgeted for last year.
Richard Portno, vice president of operations for Quonset Point-based Ocean
State Jobbers Inc., which owns Ocean State Job Lot, said the chain is planning
to hire the same numbers for each store as last season. Overall, he said the
company would boost employees by about 12 percent to more than 3,000, noting
that several new locations have been added since last Christmas.
Portno said as always the hardest part of hiring is filling managerial slots.
He said finding seasonal managerial help is almost impossible in a New England
area that’s become “somewhat over-retailed” with Kohl’s and Wal-Mart moving
into the area in recent years and further draining the pool of managerial candidates.
Holiday hiring takes on a slightly different focus at smaller independent
shops that pride themselves on offering their customers personalized service.
“The holidays account for as much as 28 percent of our annual sales,” said
David Riordan, owner of contemporary gift shop OOP!, which has stores on Thayer
Street and in the Providence Place mall. “It’s a huge spike…and then you have
such a short time to justify the hiring and training of people. But you don’t
want people devoid of knowledge, especially in a specialty market.”
Sarah Zacks, owner of Books on the Square in Wayland Square, said she’s expecting
to see a busier Christmas season than last year, when her holiday sales numbers
remained healthy. She also stressed the importance of customer service.
“I’m in a pretty lucky situation,” Zacks said. “Most of my help is high school
kids who go off to college and then return home for the holidays. They love
to come back and the customers remember them. I’ve sort of raised my own Christmas
help over the years.”
Riordan relies on similar “seasoned OOP!-sters” and said that his staff will
double from around 18 people to more than 40 at the two operations. He said
the stores rely heavily on their core staff for taking on extra hours, a practice
he said they are compensated for and are usually happy for the extra holiday
cash. Seasonal workers were hired for Providence Place in October, while he
said Thayer Street traffic will pick up closer to Thanksgiving.
It’s not surprising that the biggest mass hiring numbers will be at retail
discounters as sales forecasts remain down for department stores and apparel
retailers. Spokespeople from Filene’s and its sister chain, Kaufmann’s, along
with Nordstroms and Macy’s department stores, would only say they anticipated
adding the same numbers to their ranks as last year.
One of the few exceptions to this trend is The Gap Inc. – parent company of
Old Navy, Gap and Banana Republic – one of the few retailers that plans to bring
on more workers this holiday season than it did during last year’s holiday season.
The company expects to hire 20,000 employees, a 30 percent increase from last
year.
For the fourth quarter, staffing-services firm Manpower Inc. offered a less
bullish forecast for wholesale and retail hiring when surveying employers in
a variety of industries in its Employment Outlook Survey.
“Wholesale/retail trade employers report their usual spike in hiring plans
for the fourth quarter, due to the annual holiday shopping frenzy,” the report
states, but it quickly adds a cautionary note. “The seasonally adjusted data
gives that surge a bit more context. Employers anticipate an increase in jobs
over last quarter, but not as many as they planned to offer a year ago.”
While Manpower’s overall employment outlook is positive throughout the country,
retail jobs are expected to be plentiful in the South and stable in the Midwest
and West, while the Northeast will offer the fewest employment opportunities.
Lisa Goldizen, the branch manager of Manpower’s Providence office, said her
branch’s biggest seasonal project was finding 200 employees for the Providence
Post Office, most to help in sorting the bulk mail of the season.
“It was fairly easy to do,” said Goldizen, who said the company had been able
to include the job posting in the 12,000 unemployment checks mailed out by the
state Department of Labor. “Unfortunately, there are a lot of people out of
work in Providence.”
The scene is still a sharp contrast to what it was in the late 1990s, said
Leonard Lardaro, an economics professor at the University of Rhode Island, in
early November. It was less than five years ago that the economy was so strong
and unemployment was so low that retailers were forced to offer signing bonuses
and set-your-own-hours schedules in a bidding war for holiday workers.
“It’s nice for the company’s bottom line,” said Lardaro of the reasonably
low price for bringing in seasonal retail help. “And it’s not going to take
a banner year for retailers to have a great holiday season, especially compared
to last year. Anything close to the numbers from four years ago is going to
be considered phenomenal.”
