Holiday job seekers confront an ‘incredibly stressful’ market

Nicholas Strahl has always been able to find extra work around the holidays. But this year has been the exception.

Mr Strahl, 41, works as a part-time retail sales associate at an office supplies store just outside Indianapolis, Indiana. While the pay is “okay”, he said it “never hurts to have a little bit more”.

Finding seasonal holiday employment, for extra cash to pay his bills and buy holiday gifts for friends and family, has been a challenge. He started his search in early October and applied to CVS, Best Buy and a slew of other retailers – to no avail.

“I’ve never seen the job market like this – it’s pretty crazy,” he said.

“It doesn’t really leave a lot of power for people who just want to get a job, or have a supplement in income.”

Seasonal hiring is poised to drop to its lowest level since the aftermath of the 2008 recession, according to the National Retail Federation. The pullback, a sign of caution among US businesses in the face of tariffs and consumer angst, comes as more people are looking for work in the cooling job market.

The industry group expects retailers to hire between 265,000 and 365,000 seasonal workers, down from 442,000 last year.

The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which also predicted the weakest holiday season for retail hiring in more than 15 years, said tariffs, inflation and reliance on automation are dampening demand for seasonal hires.

If Mr Strahl can’t land a holiday job, he plans to cut down on holiday gifts and hold off on some car repairs. He will wait to replace his old laptop.

“At this point,” he said, “I’m willing to take anything I can get.”

Data from Indeed shows that while postings for seasonal work have largely held steady compared to last year, more people are seeking seasonal jobs.

And in retail, traditionally one of the biggest hirers for the holidays, there are fewer opportunities.

The labour market is “frozen with frostbite”, said Allison Shrivastava, an economist with the Indeed Hiring Lab. The fact that seasonal job postings have held steady from last year is reflective of the labour market’s paralysis, she said.

“You have a much bigger labour pool competing for a smaller number of jobs,” she added.

The government shutdown, which lasted more than one month before ending on 13 November, had delayed the release of official data on the labour market. But data for September, finally released last week, showed a surprising pick-up in hiring after a lacklustre summer.

Employers added 119,000 jobs in September, more than double what many analysts had expected, but the unemployment rate ticked up from 4.3% to 4.4%.

Data from Revelio Labs, a workforce intelligence firm, shows job openings in the retail sector in October were down 22% from last year. The drop signals less demand among retailers for holiday workers.

“We’re just not seeing the usual pick-up in holiday hiring,” said Lisa Simon, Revelio’s chief economist.

Several leading retailers, including Target and Walmart, have refrained from saying how many additional workers they will bring onto their payrolls for the holidays.

Walmart may hire on a store-by-store basis, but extra hours during the holidays will mostly be given to current employees, a company spokesperson said.

The lack of specificity marks a divergence from previous years, when the firms have announced their seasonal hiring plans in advance.

In contrast, Amazon says it will hire the same number of people in its fulfilment and transportation network as it has over the past two years.

“The cautious pace of announcements so far suggests that companies are not betting on a big seasonal surge,” Andy Challenger, senior vice president of sales at Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in a statement.

It follows recent high-profile layoffs at big US companies, including in the retail sector.

Some smaller retailers are also treading carefully as they head into the holidays, further limiting options for job hunters to find roles at local shops.

For Hobby Works, a chain of two toy stores in Maryland, pressure from tariff costs and whiplash on economic policy this year has been compounded in recent weeks by the federal government shutdown.

Located just outside Washington, the company, which employs 24 people, pushed back its usual timeline for hiring seasonal workers, president Michael Brey said.

Concern about a pullback in spending among government workers, who found themselves without pay for more than a month before the shutdown ended, encouraged the store to cut costs by scaling back hiring, he said.

“Hanukkah always happens, Christmas always comes, so we try not to alter our hiring patterns too much,” Mr Brey said.

“But this is the first year we’re moving very slowly.”

Two years ago, Tanya Secord sailed her way through the application process to land a temporary job at Target, where she worked as a part-time cashier during the 2023 holiday season.

This year, her job hunt has been marred by disappointment after disappointment.

Ms Secord, 52, sent her resume to retailers including Costco and Target, hoping her experience working in retail would help. But each application was met with either radio silence or a rejection.

“It was incredibly stressful because the price of groceries has gone up, the cost of living in general is ridiculous,” said Ms Secord, who finally landed a receptionist role in early November.