A major change is taking place in holiday hiring
A major change is taking place in holiday hiring
Erin KellerWed, November 11, 2026 at 3:49 PM UTC
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The holiday employment market is set to look a lot different this year as retailers rethink their traditional hiring sprees.
Companies are leaning more heavily on existing employees, part-time staff and warehouse workers instead of bringing on teams of temporary workers, Retail Dive reported Tuesday.
The shift comes as retailers face economic uncertainty as consumers are burdened by the fallout from the Trump administration’s tariffs, rising interest rates, high cost-of-living and mounting debt.
Seasonal hiring isn’t going away, but companies are taking a more measured approach to staffing up for the fourth quarter, experts say.
The National Retail Federation expects retailers to hire between 325,000 and 375,000 seasonal workers this year, still in line with 2025. Seasonal job postings on Indeed were up about 10 percent year-over-year at the end of September. But retail jobs made up around 61 percent of those postings, down from two-thirds in the years following the pandemic.
Economic uncertainty, rising interest rates, growing consumer debt and concerns about holiday spending are factors in retailers changing up their holiday hiring (Getty)
“Seasonal hiring is really often a microcosm of what’s happening in the broader labor market,” Cory Stahle, senior economist at Indeed, told Retail Dive. “And what we’re seeing is that there’s just not as many opportunities as there were a few years ago.”
Several major retailers have been notably quiet about their seasonal hiring plans. Walmart has not announced a projected hiring total, while Kohl’s said its seasonal hiring would vary by location and staffing needs.
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Amazon, meanwhile, has taken a different approach. The company announced plans to hire more than 300,000 seasonal, part-time and full-time workers across its U.S. operations, a 20 percent increase from its seasonal hiring numbers since 2023.
“Almost every hiring announcement we’ve seen in the last three years is smaller and more surgical than the pre-pandemic playbook,” Andy Challenger, chief revenue officer at Challenger, Gray & Christmas, told Retail Dive.
There have been some other large hiring announcements, however. Spirit Halloween announced in June that it would hire more than 52,000 seasonal associates across more than 1,500 stores in the U.S. and Canada, while Michaels planned to hire 10,000 workers, still around its 2025 numbers.
Retailers are relying more on existing employees, part-time staff and warehouse workers instead of hiring large numbers of seasonal workers fourth quarter (AFP/Getty)
Target said it would offer additional hours to existing employees and tap its On Demand team of 43,000 store workers who can pick up shifts based on their schedules. The company also plans to hire seasonal workers across its over 2,000 stores and more than 60 supply chain facilities.
Leaning more on part-time workers rather than hiring seasonal employees also means some of them could stay on after the holidays.
Indeed’s Hiring Lab found that seasonal job postings from large employers fell from about one-third of postings in September 2025 to around 20 percent this year. Meanwhile, part-time job postings increased from 38 percent to 49 percent.
“Some of this may simply be timing, but the shift toward part-time roles is worth watching,” Stahle said in the October report. “Unlike seasonal jobs, part-time jobs are less likely to end at the conclusion of the holiday season, suggesting that at least some employers may expect demand to hold up well into 2027.”
Costco and Trader Joe’s, for example, maintain consistent part-time workforces throughout the year rather than relying heavily on seasonal hires. Kirthi Kalyanam, a professor and executive director of Santa Clara University’s Retail Management Institute, told Retail Dive that approach is “not a bad idea because you’re providing consistency.”
Source: “AOL Money”
