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US retailers and hospitality groups are hiring the smallest number of seasonal workers in more than a decade as tariffs and a slowing labour market weigh on holiday sales forecasts.
Jobs site ZipRecruiter said retailers are advertising 8.4 per cent fewer holiday jobs on its site than last year, while postings for temporary hospitality workers fell 12 per cent. Executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas forecast that US employers may hire fewer than 500,000 temporary workers in the last three months of 2025, the lowest total since 2009.
Each autumn, stores such as Walmart, Target and Macy’s typically announce plans to hire hundreds of thousands of temporary staff to stock shelves, run checkouts and bolster warehouse operations during their busiest period of the year. But the reduction in hiring reflects retail industry caution about the approaching holiday shopping season, with US consumers pinched amid persistent inflation and an uncertain economic outlook.
Challenger, Gray released data on Thursday showing US employers cut more than 153,000 jobs in October and more than 1mn this year, with the pace of lay-offs accelerating as consumer and corporate spending declines and AI adoption advances.
Separately, the National Retail Federation’s holiday forecast released on Thursday said sales were expected to grow 3.7 to 4.2 per cent this year, compared with 4.3 per cent in 2024, with seasonal jobs expected to be as much as 40 per cent lower than a year ago. Still, it forecast holiday spending to eclipse $1tn.
Retailer Target said in a statement that it still planned to hire “holiday helpers” in all 50 states, but declined to provide a number, and said it would “first offer our current team members opportunities to work additional hours, if desired” before bringing in new staff. By contrast, last year the company announced it would hire an additional 100,000 workers.
Amazon said it would hire the same 250,000 seasonal workers this year as it did last year.
“Our clients have already told us that it’s going to be anywhere from 10 per cent to 20 per cent reductions” in their seasonal workforces, said Radhika Papandreou, president of the North American division of management consultancy Korn Ferry. “It’s just the world we live in with tariffs, China and just the uncertainty in general. Our clients are being cautious about how much the average consumer is going to want to spend.”