Retailers Work Harder to Lure Holiday Employees

Wall Street Journal ^ | 11/2/2015 | Suzanne Kapford

[EBH]

“We’re feeling a little bit of the tightness in the market,” said Tim Grace, the global chief talent officer for Toys “R” Us. Mr. Grace said the retailer is on track to meet its goal of hiring 40,000 seasonal workers, but added that “we are not getting as many applicants as we have in the past.”

With unemployment at a seven-year low, hourly retail work is becoming less attractive to job seekers who now have more options. The number of people employed part-time for economic reasons—those who want to work full-time but can only get a part-time job—has shrunk by 1 million to 6 million since September 2014, and stands at the lowest level since August 2008, according to the Labor Department.

“It’s a big hassle working in retailing over the holidays,” said Savannah Hughes, who earned around $9 an hour at the Chico’s FAS Inc. chain White House Black Market near her home in Dallas in 2013 and 2014.“You are basically helping angry people buy sweaters.” Mark Abramson for The Wall Street Journal Target is slightly sweetening pay for workers scheduled for Christmas Eve, offering an extra $1 an hour for any time worked that day. The 24-year-old said she has no plans to moonlight in retailing this year after Fidelity Investments, where she works full time, raised her salary to $42,000 a year from $35,000 and promoted her.

Retailers are expected to add roughly the same number of jobs to their holiday payrolls as they did last year, when they hired 755,000 people from October through December 2014, according to John Challenger, the chief executive of outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.

“Because the labor market is so tight, staffing departments are thinking long and hard about how to attract employees,” Mr. Challenger said.

[EBH]

Read this, this morning and the whole time thinking about those 90+ million people who stopped looking for work. How can the labor market be so tight with our lowest participation rate ever?

Perhaps benefits to not work are too good.

[central_va]

Pay more.

[Vigilanteman]

"Because the labor market is so tight, staffing departments are thinking long and hard about how to attract employees," Mr. Challenger said.

Smells like bull$hite. I'm betting what he means is tapping H1B types.

My wife was a long-time seasonal worker for Macy's when they decided they wanted to attract a younger hipper crowd and let her go.

We still walk through their mall store on occasion just because it is the easiest place to find parking near the door. Do you suppose there is a reason for that?

[thackney]

Yes, when they pay isn’t too bad to sit on your butt and stay on government welfare, working wages has to rise to compete.

And so the prices rise, because of increased welfare.

[GailA]

Then you have people like me who can’t walk the mall, yet don’t qualify for a electric cart, have 7 grands and 5 great grands, you have no earthly idea what they’d want. Nor can I stand the scents they put in the air, they make me sick. Since they did away with CHRISTMAS, I don’t care to even try and shop.

So you do what I do, go to Kroger’s and buy gift cards for Amazon and let them do their own shopping. And you get gas points. I do it the day they put the cards at 4 times the points. In 10 minutes of not fighting rude shoppers, rude cashier’s that are not well trained, long lines, I’m done and gone. Even Hubby’s will be bought this way. I did it for his BD, and the Gorilla cart he needed to pull behind the ridding mower was at our door in 2 days. Couldn’t find anything at the local Lowes or Home Depot that equaled it.

They hire extra workers so they don’t have to pay the regular Part Timers 30 hr workers as FULL TIMERS. Thank 0, 0’care for this.

[Dilbert San Diego]

Plus they avoid paying their regular employees time and a half overtime with this technique.

[goodnesswins]

Winnah! !!

[neefer]

And so the prices rise, because of increased welfare.

We recently moved to West Virginia and have found out that it's hard for companies to keep certain types of employees due to the abuse of entitlement programs. People realize they only need to make $8,000 in additional income per year to get by. So they work a few months out of the year, then quit.

[Vigilanteman]

Spot on! Even the kids whom these mall stores let their older seasonal workers go in order to up their hip appeal, don't hang out at the malls much any more . . . at least not the kind that have cash to spend. You get a far better selection plus pricing at websites like Amazon, Choxi, Wayfair and all the rest.

I'll still go to Sears in the mall when I need advice and tools for home projects and the like because they have staff that knows $h*+ from apple butter about their product line. But that's about it . . . close parking at Macy's and Sears on the other end of the mall makes for a nice brisk walk if I have the time and inclination and can't find it at Harbor Freight Tools . . . something that happens about every other month or when my Mrs. just has to go to the mall.

[Dallas59]

Everyone has gone to a point and productivity system. You get 12 points a year, being late deducts a point, clocking in early is a point, even coming to work without your badge is point. Productivity is measured by how many boxes you pull, how many customers you help, how many costumers you check out and so on. Wonder why the guy or girl at the checkout seems rude when you try to talk to them? They don’t have time to do that. You are reducing their productivity and possibly causing them to lose a point.

[Nifster]

If you haven’t worked retail at the holidays you have no clue.

Many of the people out of work get NO benefits and have hence been dropped from the numbers cooking racket of the government.

[SkyPilot]

American Retail.........RIP.

[pinqy27]

You do realize that “The unemployment data derived from the household survey in no way depend upon the eligibility for or receipt of unemployment insurance benefits.”

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.tn.htm

[Nifster]

Don’t cherry pick....within the same paragraph is this

“People are classified as unemployed if they meet all of the following criteria:
they had no employment during the reference week; they were available for work at that time; and they made specific efforts to find employment sometime during the 4-week period ending with the reference week.’

MANY folks have fallen out of the labor force because they have given up looking because there is nothing out there and they have been looking for multiple months.

The labor statistics in the country are cooked by the gov to make it look better. Truth is there are millions out of work and the labor participation rate is at its lowest in decades.

And for those that think the small amount of money that folks get from unemployment is somehow enticing people not to go to work.....think again.

[Pollster1]

Why work? You get your ObamaPhone, your ObamaCare, your ObamaMortgage, and your ObamaWelfare for free if you don’t work. Only fools work, and they (and their children and future grandchildren) are overloaded paying for all that free stuff.