Retailers Struggle To Attract Workers Before The Holidays


Macy’s offers referral bonuses of up to $500 for each friend or family member it recruits to join its employees. Walmart pays $17 an hour to get started and has begun offering free college tuition to its employees. And some Amazon warehouse jobs now offer signing bonuses of up to $3,000.

Waiting retailers holiday shopping season They are scrambling to find enough workers to work in their stores and distribution centers, which will be bustling once again this year after being wracked by the coronavirus in 2020. tight labor market. Convincing applicants to an industry that has been more battered than most is not easy. the many challenges of the pandemicfrom mask-wearing fights high infection rates among employees. Eager retail workers are likely to earn more wages and work fewer hours, while consumers may be satisfied by less inventory and understaffed.

“People who want to work in the retail industry often have little choice – this is largely due to geography and the availability of working hours,” said Mark A. Cohen, director of retail research at Columbia University’s business school. “Now they can pick and choose who has the highest, best perks, bonuses and hourly wages. And as we’ve seen, the climb is stunning.”

Or as CEO Jeff Gennette Macy’sPlanning to hire 76,000 full- and part-time employees this season, he said in a recent interview: “Everyone is going through it – there’s a battle for talent on the front lines. My opinion is that we all need to up our game.”

While some of the most generous benefits, such as tuition reimbursement, are mainly available to long-term workers, even seasonal workers will receive higher wages than usual. It’s especially critical for retailers to get temporary help this year as current employees have already been struggling from the pandemic conditions for nearly two years. The National Retail Federation, an industry group, expects record holiday sales and estimates retailers will hire 500,000 to 665,000 seasonal workers in 2020, significantly more than 486,000.

“The biggest risk for retailers and distributors is that they overwork their existing workforce,” said Scott Mushkin, founder of R5 Capital, a New Canaan, Conn-based financial advisor. “Overtime can only go so far. The workforce is tired.”

Mr. Mushkin experienced firsthand how eager retailers are for workers during a visit to a Home Depot in Naperville, Illinois, last month.

“I was looking at a sign in the store listing open positions when a manager asked me if I was interested in applying,” said Mr. Mushkin.

Mr Mushkin said he was impressed not only by the manager’s desperation, but also by the number of positions available. “Basically every job in that store is open,” he said. “So who’s doing these jobs now? Who’s taking the space?”

These pressures may explain why major retailers like Walmart are looking to hire 150,000 additional workers this season to supplement their existing staff. For the few years leading up to the pandemic, Walmart offered existing workers extra hours during the holidays, but did not launch a major hiring offensive. (Existing employees can still sign up for additional hours.) It recently raised its minimum wage to $12 an hour, and some stores are offering new workers $17 an hour.

Amazon It is looking for an additional 150,000 this holiday season, after an effort to increase its permanent workforce by 125,000. While giant retailers swallow most job candidates, attracting new employees is much more difficult for others.

Many retailers, such as Saks Off 5th, have reiterated their commitment to stay closed on Thanksgiving this year; this was a welcome change for workers after years of shopping trend. invade the holiday. Requiring employees to work in stores that day will likely be a particularly hard sell this year.

Nordstrom, which aims to hire 28,600 seasonal and regular employees, said it increased its bonus and incentive pay for hourly and overnight store employees from $400 to $650 last year.

Saks Off said on October 5th that it raised the minimum base wage for hourly store employees to $15 an hour — more than double the federal minimum wage — and won’t offer long shopping hours during the holidays this year so staff can have more flexibility. .

Best Buy allows job applicants to submit videos for first-round interviews instead of coming physically, and said in a recent statement that videos “can be recorded and reviewed without the need to go back and forth in programming.”

Retailer scrambles emerge as the American economy strengthens. 531,000 jobs added in October, a sharp recovery compared to the previous month. But the labor force participation rate, which measures the share of the working-age population working or seeking employment, remained steady at 61.6 percent last month, even as unemployment fell from 4.8 percent to 4.6 percent. This indicates that the current pool of workers is tight.

“We are coming out of a crisis we have never experienced, where millions of people are on leave, laid off or laid off from the workforce, and we think they’re all going to show up and come back on a certain date. work is a bit silly,” said Mr. Cohen.

While fears of the delta variant are keeping some workers at bay, the retail industry has been reluctant to impose vaccine mandates for fear that store workers may leave and find seasonal workers even more difficult. A new vaccine or testing requirement For companies with 100 or more employees, announced by the Biden administration on Thursday, it’s essentially forced their hands, although it’s not scheduled to go into effect until Jan. temporarily blocked by a federal appeals court in Louisiana on Saturday. (The mandate instructs employers to require unvaccinated workers to wear masks by December 5.)

The National Retail Federation criticized the mission, saying it imposes “new burdensome requirements on retailers during the key holiday shopping season.”

Stephen Smith, CEO of Maine-based outdoor retailer LL Bean, said it was “incredibly difficult” to hire hourly workers, especially for its 50+ stores. The chain offers no bonuses, but has prioritized new forms of flexibility to attract workers. For example, jobs in the domestic call center are now completely remote.

At the stores, “we’ve changed our shift structure so you can do two or four hour shifts,” to “make your job that much easier if you’re taking on family responsibilities,” Mr. Smith said.

The company has also tried to highlight its unique benefits, including several paid days off for employees to pursue their outdoor experience.

The difficulty of finding workers is due to how difficult many retail jobs and short working hours given to many store employees at the worst time of the pandemic. They have been regularly exposed to Covid-19 and have been involved in customer conflicts over wearing masks and have been inconsistently offered hazard pay or other compensation for their efforts. Many retail workers said they were not properly informed When exposed to the virus in stores.

Anthony Stropoli, a personal shopper at Bergdorf Goodman, has one of the profitable, customer-facing businesses in retail that has been on the decline in recent years and noted that luxury retail is a different game. has worked before Barney New YorkIt filed for bankruptcy in 2019.

“A lot of people don’t want to work in retail right now – I really, really see it,” said Mr Stropoli. “People don’t feel appreciated or compensated fairly and I think this whole Covid thing has really made them rethink. They want to feel valued.”

All this means that workers are under more pressure this season than in the past. Joel Bines, global co-leader of retail practice at consulting firm AlixPartners, said if retailers are to find enough workers this season, they need to pay them more and fundamentally improve working conditions.

“It’s hard to believe for retailers who treat their employees like disposable gear to increase their profits, they say they’re shocked that they can’t find people to work for them,” Bines said.

“What the industry needs to realize is that workers are now agents,” he added. “They have agency in a way they never had before.”

Contact Sapna Maheshwari at sapna@nytimes.com and Michael Corkery at michael.corkery@nytimes.com.



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