A month ago the National Retail Federation projected a weak holiday hiring season. But hiring data wasn't in yet, so it was just a guess.
Last week we got JOLTS hiring data for October and today we got employment levels for November. So now we can finally take a look:
Sure enough, holiday hiring is down compared to pre-pandemic levels. JOLTS reports retail hiring down 50% compared to the average of the previous decade. The employment report says retail hiring is down about 30%.
In both cases, however, the real decline came at the start of the pandemic. Hiring for 2023 is pretty much unchanged since 2022.
POSTSCRIPT: Just in case this is confusing, the payroll data is for two months (October and November) while JOLTS data is for one month. That's why they differ significantly.
Malls here in NJ -- where the Mall is the state mammal, bird, molecule, and virus -- are close to empty compared to 15 years ago. Kids don't hang out there like they did, parents shop online, and -- shockingly -- downtowns are making a comeback in many communities.
In my Central Jersey area the formerly dead county seat downtown is rocking seven days a week, and the mall was just sold and may become mixed use after losing two anchor stores and a bunch of smaller chains.
Several of the stores in the mall near me aren't even staying open until closing time some days.
The bigger problem though is the anchor stores. There are hardly any businesses that want, or more to the point can even use, that much retail space any more. The real anchor today is the Apple store which is probably 1/10 as big as the old Sears was and yet it probably gets as much traffic.
Yeah. Came here to chime in with something similar. We may be sliding into a recession for all I know (Kevin certainly seems to think so) but holiday retail hiring probably isn't the critical data point it used to be. Maybe these days we should look at "retail + warehouse/logistics" holiday hiring.
My brother was laid off from his job designing store layout for Walgreens - yeah I'd say that's a leading indicator. Since Walgreens is closing a lot of stores because they over extended they need fewer folks on the team, my brother was one of many.
I have the impression there are fewer holiday lights and yard displays this year.
I dunno, holiday sales have seemed pretty brisk. My kids all work in retail stores and they say merch is pretty much flying off the shelves. My wife has had to resort to finding used toys on ebay or Facebook marketplace because the stuff she's shopping for has been sold out at the traditional big box stores.
Just thought I'd chime into this topic.
Americans (and possibly others) have widely incorporated two changes made in response to the pandemic, into the post-pandemic period: online shopping and WFH.
I think you can suss that out from the data.