Macy’s is offering referral bonuses of up to $500 for each friend or family member that employees recruit to join the company. Walmart employees can earn as high as $17 an hour and are eligible for free college tuition. Amazon warehouse jobs can now be signed up for signing bonuses up to $3,000.
Retailers expect the holiday shopping season will be bustling this year, following the disruption caused by the coronavirus 2020. They are trying to find workers to staff their stores in a tight labor market. It is not proving easy to entice applicants to an industry that has been battered, more than most, by the pandemic’s many challenges, from fights over mask wearing to high rates of infection among employees. Retail workers who are willing to work in retail will likely earn higher salaries and work fewer hours. Consumers may be treated with less inventory and understaffed stores.
“Folks looking to work in retail have typically had very little choice — it’s largely been driven by geography and availability of hours,” said Mark A. Cohen, the director of retail studies at Columbia University’s business school. “Now they can pick and choose who’s got the highest, best benefits, bonuses and hourly rates. And as we’ve seen, the escalation has been striking.”
Or as Jeff Gennette, the chief executive of Macy’s, which plans to hire 76,000 full- and part-time employees this season, put it in a recent interview: “Everyone’s experiencing this — there’s a war for talent at the front lines. My sense is we all have to raise our game.”
Although long-term workers are eligible for the most generous perks such as tuition reimbursement, seasonal workers will be paid more than usual. It’s especially critical for retailers to hire temporary help this year because existing employees are already strained from nearly two years of pandemic conditions. The National Retail Federation, an industry association, predicts that retailers will hire between 500,000 and 665,000 seasonal workers this holiday season, which is significantly more than the 486,000 expected in 2020.
“The biggest risk to retailers and distributors is that they are working their current work force too much,” said Scott Mushkin, who founded the financial consultant R5 Capital, based in New Canaan, Conn. “Overtime can only go so far. The work force is tired out.”
During a visit to Naperville’s Home Depot last month, Mr. Mushkin witnessed firsthand the eagerness of retailers for workers.
“I was looking at a sign listing open positions at the store when I was basically accosted by a manager asking if I was interested in applying,” Mr. Mushkin said.
Mr. Mushkin said he was struck 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 is doing those jobs now? Who is picking up the slack?”
These pressures could explain why Walmart is looking to hire 150,000 more workers to augment its existing staff. Walmart offered employees extra hours for holidays for several years before the pandemic. However, it did not initiate a large-scale hiring spree. Existing employees can still sign-up for additional hours. It recently increased its minimum wage to $12 an an hour and some stores are now offering $17 an an hour to new employees.
Amazon is also seeking additional 150,000 workers for the holiday season. This follows a push by Amazon to increase its permanent workforce by 125,000. It is difficult to attract new employees when giant retailers are buying up many of the job applicants.
Saks Off 5th is one of many retailers that has reiterated its commitment to be closed on Thanksgiving. This is a welcome change for workers who have endured a long trend of shopping invading Thanksgiving. This year, it would be difficult to get employees to work in stores on Thanksgiving.
Nordstrom, which plans to hire 28,600 seasonal employees and regular employees, stated that it has increased its bonus and incentive pay up to $650 for hourly or overnight store workers, from $400 last year.
Saks Off 5th said in October that it was raising its minimum base wage for hourly store workers to $15 per hour — more than double the federal minimum wage — and that it would not offer extended holiday shopping hours this year so that staff could have more flexibility.
Best Buy is allowing job applicants to submit videos rather than coming in physically for a first round of interviews, saying in a recent statement that the videos “can be recorded and reviewed without the need to go back and forth on scheduling.”
Retailers are scrambling to sell at a time when the American economy is growing stronger. In October, 531,000 jobs were added, a sharp rebound from the previous months. But even as unemployment dropped to 4.6 percent from 4.8 percent, the labor participation rate — which measures the share of the working-age population employed or looking for a job — was flat last month, at 61.6 percent. This suggests that the labor pool is still limited.
“We’re coming out of a crisis we have no experience in dealing with, in which millions of people were furloughed or laid off or removed from the work force, and to think they’ll all show up on certain date to come back to work is kind of silly,” Mr. Cohen said. “Some people are still fearful about coming back to work, especially in a job in which they would be exposed to large numbers of the public.”
Although some workers may be avoiding the Delta variant, the retail industry was reluctant to impose vaccine mandates out of fear that workers might leave the store and make it harder to find seasonal workers. The Biden administration announced a new vaccinate or-test requirement for businesses with 100 employees or more on Thursday. However, it is not expected to go into effect until January 4, and was temporarily blocked by a federal appeals court from Louisiana. Employers will be required to require that unvaccinated workers wear masks by Dec. 5.)
The National Retail Federation was critical of the mandate, saying it imposes “burdensome new requirements on retailers during the crucial holiday shopping season.”
Stephen Smith, chief executive of L.L. Bean, the outdoor retailer based in Maine, said it has been “incredibly challenging” to hire hourly employees, especially for its more than 50 stores. While the chain isn’t offering bonuses, it has made an effort to offer new flexibility to attract employees. The company’s domestic call centre jobs are now completely remote.
In stores, Mr. Smith said, “we have changed our shift structure so you can do two- or four-hour shifts” in an attempt to “make it a lot easier if you’re juggling family responsibilities.”
The company has also tried to highlight its unique benefits, such as several paid days off that allow employees to enjoy outdoor experiences.
The difficulty of finding workers has brought to light the difficulties of many retail jobs and the poor treatment given to many store workers during the worst pandemic. They were regularly exposed and were involved in customer conflicts involving masks. They were also offered hazard compensation or no compensation. Many retail workers claimed that they weren’t properly informed about the virus when they were exposed in stores.
Anthony Stropoli is a personal shopper at Bergdorf Goodman. He noted that luxury retail was a different game. He worked previously at Barneys New York. It filed for bankruptcy on January 2019.
“A lot of people do not want to work in retail right now — I really, really see it,” Mr. Stropoli said. “People are not feeling appreciated or fairly compensated, and I think this whole Covid thing has made them really rethink that. They want to feel valued.”
This means that workers have greater leverage this season than ever before. Joel Bines, global leader of AlixPartners’ retail practice, stated that retailers must pay more and improve working conditions if they want to hire enough workers this season.
“For retailers, who have treated their workers as dispensable cogs in order to increase the bottom line, to say they are shocked that they can’t find people to work for them is hard to believe,” Mr. Bines said.
“The thing that the industry needs to realize is that workers have agency now,” he added. “They have agency in a way they never have before.”
Contact Sapna Maheshwari at sapna@nytimes.com and Michael Corkery at michael.corkery@nytimes.com.
Source: NY Times
