Christmas hiring expected to be down this year

The upcoming holiday season probably won’t set any records for temporary hiring.

Challenger, Gray & Christmas has released its annual holiday hiring forecast, and it’s not optimistic.

The Chicago-based executive outplacement firm predicts that U.S. retailers will add less than 500,000 jobs during the fourth quarter of 2025, when retailers and other sectors traditionally make their holiday hires.

The company’s October jobs report supports that pessimistic forecast.

U.S.-based employers announced 153,074 job cuts, a 175 percent increase from the cuts made in October 2024.

The report noted that this year’s October job loss was “much higher than average” for that month, and that several factors – including a drop in consumer and corporate spending, inflation and the growing influence of AI – were at least partly responsible for that trend.

“People who have been laid off now are finding it harder to quickly secure new roles, which could further loosen the labor market,” said Andy Challenger, senior vice president for Challenger, Gray & Christmas, in a statement.

Seasonal hiring nationwide and in the Inland Empire should be solid but not spectacular, said Jay Prag, professor of economics at the Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate University.

“I said a couple of months ago that I think it will be a decent Christmas, and I still feel that way, including hiring,” Prag said. “The stock market is doing well, and ending the government shutdown will help, although I’m concerned it might have happened too late. But I think there’s cautious optimism that the economy won’t be going into a recession.”

However, the days of Inland Empire warehouses hiring a lot of “temps” to deal with the holiday rush might be numbered.

“This could be one of the last years we have a boom in that sector, because (companies) still use people to do a lot of the warehouse work and all of the delivery work,” Prag said. “I think those jobs are vulnerable down the road because of AI, but for now they’re probably safe.”

If the Challenger forecast ends up being accurate, 2025 will be the weakest Christmas hiring since 2009, when the Great Recession was in full force. Whether another recession will happen remains to be seen, but it does appear that a lot of people who are looking for a temporary job this year won’t be able to find one.

Several factors, including tariffs and rising prices, have led to this state of affairs. Also, a lot of companies are using automation, and are paying their permanent staff to work more hours rather than hire temporary workers to handle the Christmas rush.

“Seasonal employers are facing a confluence of factors this year,” Challenger said. “While we could see a late hiring push if holiday sales surprise to the upside, the cautious pace of (hiring) announcements so far suggests that companies are not betting on a big seasonal surge.

“This year may be more about doing more with less.”

Those hiring announcements include, according to money.com:

• Amazon, which will hire 250,000 full and part-time seasonal workers, the same number it hired last year. Fulfillment and transportation positions will be its highest priority, and standard pay will be $19 an hour.
• Bath & Body Works will hire 30,000 seasonal workers, mostly part-time associates and full-time distribution center workers. No pay scale was announced.
• Dick’s Sporting Goods will make approximately 14,000 holiday hires this year. About 9,100 will be with that sporting goods chain, the rest with companies owned by Dick’s, including Champs and Footlocker.
• Michael’s, the arts and craft’s chain, will add 10,000 seasonal employees in 2025, and will offer its employees extra hours. Last year, more than half of Michael’s seasonal hires remained as full-time employees, according to a company statement.
• Macy’s, Inc., has announced it will hire seasonal workers in 2025, as will two retail chains in its portfolio: Bluemercury, a chain of U.S. beauty stores, and Bloomingdale’s. The number of people expected to be hired was not released.
• Target has announced that its Christmas hires this year will be paid at least $15 an hour, but it has not said how many it plans to bring on. In 2024, Target hired 100,000 temporary holiday workers.
• Kohl’s has confirmed that it will hire “seasonal associates” for its stores and distribution centers, It did not say how many or how much they will be paid.
• Walmart, has not announced how many – if any – extra workers it expects to hire in 2025, the third year it has declined to make that announcement. In 2021, Walmart made 150,000 Christmas hires. This year, Walmart is expected to offer extra hours to its full-time employees, and possibly make some seasonal hires to work in its fulfillment centers, according to reports.
• Like Walmart, UPS and FedEx have not said how many seasonal hires they plan to make this year, but both are hiring package handlers, drivers and assistant drivers, full and part-time;
• The U.S. Postal Service will hire 14,000 temporary holiday employees this year, mostly assistant clerks and mail handlers, with pay at about $20 an hour.

The National Retail Federation is predicting between 265,000 and 365,000 seasonal hires in 2025 a forecast it calls “in line” with a labor market slowed by tariffs, inflation, and the government shutdown.

Even if the high end of that forecast is correct, it will fall short of 2024, when U.S. retailers hired 442,000 holiday employees.

Seasonal hiring, normally a big part of the job market at the end of the year, might have been moved up this year to support retailers early holiday buying, according to the federation’s holiday spending forecast.

“Because of the ongoing tariff situation, retailers will be closely monitoring spending patterns and waiting to make staff additions should demand strengthen throughout the holiday season,” the forecast states.
Like the Christmas season itself, Christmas-related hiring might be stronger than people expect it to be, according to Prag.

“I give it a four on a scale of one to five,” he said. “I think a lot of the concern about tariffs, and the rampant uncertainty coming out of Washington (D.C.) is beginning to resolve itself. That will make it easier to hire people.”