The status quo is just fine with Connecticut retailers when it comes to holiday hiring. It will be considered a good thing if employment levels stay the same as 2011.
“It’s hard to get an exact number,” said Tim Phelan, president of the Connecticut Retail Merchants Association, “but we’re getting an early sense of an uptick.” But then he poised this question. “An uptick, how do you define that?”
Phelan said the national outlook is for holiday hiring to be slightly ahead of last year. “Even if we’re at last year’s total, that’s good,” he said. “The signs I’ve seen some of the major retailers are doing some additional hiring.”
The retail economy in Connecticut has “up and down” for the last year, he added. “Flat [growth] is actually good as long as you’re not going down,” Phelan said.
Before 2008, retailers would expect the annual growth in holiday sales to be 2 to 4 percent. That number roughly equaled hiring, too, Phelan said.
One aspect of the uncertainty over hiring needs is guessing wrong. “You don’t want to overstaff or understaff. It’s a balancing act,” he said.
According to the National Retail Federation, last year retailers hired 607,500 associates during the holiday season, up 7.9 percent from 2010. It reports that The Limited will added 2,000 seasonal employees for its distribution centers; Kohl’s will increase its seasonal hiring by 10 percent to 52,700 seasonal employees and add 5,000 jobs at its distribution centers and warehouses; and Target, while hiring slightly less than last year, will still add 80,000 to 90,000 jobs.
Connecticut statistics on last year’s holiday hiring were not available from the state Department of Labor.
While Phelan was conservative on expectations for holiday hiring, he did seem more positive on this being a good retail season. “My sense is it’s going to be a good year,” he said, “and the retailers want to be ready for it.”
Consumers, he added, are focused on Election Day but should hit the stores after that.
Electronics is not necessarily going to be a big holiday purchase this year, Phelan explained, because new technology has been rolled out ahead of the holiday season (like the iPhone 5). “Apparel and jewelry and soft goods are going to be strong,” he said, adding that apparel will be popular because it doesn’t have the high cost associated with electronics.
Consumers are also going to hold back until later in the buying season in hopes of getting good markdowns.
One big push of the Connecticut Retail Merchants will be to have consumers shop locally, but that doesn’t mean just small businesses. Phelan said the group just wants consumers to get off the Internet and come into stores from Big Box down to Mom and Pop. Internet retailers, he said, operate at an unfair advantage because they don’t have to charge sales tax. “You don’t get a sense of community by sitting in front of your computer,” he added.
