It's finally time to check in on the prediction of weak holiday hiring by the National Retail Federation. With December numbers finally in, how did we do?
In one sense, the NRF was wrong. They projected 345-445,000 retail workers would be hired, a 40% decrease from 2021. In reality, hiring was nowhere near that bad. It came in at 564,000, down only 11%.
On the other hand, hiring was clearly weaker than the non-recession average of the past couple of decades. In fact, aside from the recession years of 2008-09, it was the second weakest holiday hiring season since 2000.
Overall, I'd say the NRF was too pessimistic, but nonetheless pessimism was the right call. Holiday hiring wasn't disastrous, but it was still fairly bad.
OK, but holiday hiring isn't entirely independent of hiring during the rest of the year. If hiring was weak during the beginning of the year, the economy was probably somewhat sour. The holidays aren't going to change that all on their own. Hiring for the holdiays will refelct the yearlong weakness.
At the same time, if hiring has been quite strong through the first nine months of the year, the need for additional hiring for the holidays may be muted. Companies may already have the staff they need to handle the holiday surge.
Does the rasoning in these two hypotheticals contradict itself? Yes! That's econ for you.
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I wonder how much of the hiring trend can be tied to ecommerce. As more purchased occur online, firms typically need fewer retail employees than year past.
Note, yes the warehouse load would increase: however, a warehouse uses more technology and is more effecient, when compared to a retail employee.
Yeah, not as many malls operating at high staffing, and even those oevels of staffing is lower than it was.
You still need more people on the delivery side but more automation is showing up there, too.
Seems to me, there ought to be some long-term downward trends in this sector, as indicated by 2013 - 2018, but also, you kind of hide the total retail (permanent + seasonal) which is the most important number to track, don't you think? https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1dIWN
From what I can discern, we're talking about 80K fewer seasonal hires between 2022 and 2023 seasons. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1dIWX