Outlook for holiday job market is good

Hiring is expected to outpace 2013, which was a good year. FedEx and United Parcel Service are both planning large numbers of hires, a sign of the growing importance of e-commerce, and some merchants in San Bernardino are getting ready to fill temporary positions.

Christmas is still three months away, but all indications are that 2014 will be a good year for temporary hiring during the holiday shopping season.

Nationally, several companies – including Kohl’s, Walmart, Target, UPS and FedEx – have already announced that they plan to hire extra people to handle the Christmas rush.

Kohl’s, which operates 19 stores in the Inland Empire, will hire 67,000 people, an average of 50 workers per store nationwide, company officials announced this month.

The Wisconsin-based chain, which operates more than 1,160 stores in 49 states, plans to hire about 9,300 people at its distribution centers and 670 associates at its credit facilities.

That’s a 34 percent increase compared with last year, Kohl’s officials said.

Kohl’s has already started hiring – it began filling jobs at its distribution centers last month – and it expects to have most of its holiday positions filled by mid-November, according to a statement.

At the same time, Walmart is ramping up its Christmas hiring, though not as much a its competitors. The largest retail chain in the United States will hire 60,000 temporary workers for the holiday season, 10 percent more than it hired last year but well below Kohl’s and Target.

Minneapolis-based Target announced this month that it expects to hire about 70,000 holiday workers this year, roughly the same number it hired last year. The company has yet to release a breakdown of how many of those workers will be in stores and how many will work in the company’s distribution centers.

Two of the country’s largest overnight delivery services, FedEx and United Parcel Service will hire 50,000 and 90,000 seasonal workers this year respectively. Most people hired by FedEx will have an opportunity to remain with the company after the Christmas shopping season, according to company officials.

Last year, FedEx originally said it would hire 55,000 holiday workers but ended up hiring closer to 85,000.

United Parcel Service plans to hire package sorters, loading personnel, delivery helpers and drivers, and the company expects to hire more people this year than it did in 2013, said John McDevitt, United Parcel Service spokesman, in a statement.

Demand for service is expected to be spread throughout the United States, and anyone hired for temporary work during the holidays will be considered for permanent employment, McDevitt said.

At Inland Center Mall in San Bernardino, several retailers, including Bath & Body Works, Wetzel’s Pretzels and Macy’s have all announced plans to add temporary workers, maybe starting as early as the first week of October, said Terri Relf, the mall’s senior marketing manager.

“We’re going to see at least as much hiring this year as we did last year,” said Relf, who said the majority of store managers she’s spoken with are optimistic about this year’s holiday season. “And last year was a good year. We’re also going to see an early start this year, at least with some retailers.”

The planned hiring by United Parcel Service and FedEx shows how popular online shopping is getting, especially at Christmas, said Jackie Fernandez, retail analyst with the Los Angeles office of Deloitte & Touche, a global retail and economic consulting firm.

“There’s no other explanation,” Fernandez said. “E-commerce gets a little more popular every year, and a little more important, and not only on Amazon.”

Deloitte & Touche is still working on its hiring forecast for this season, but it expects at least as much hiring as last year and probably a little bit more. Most of the retailers she talks with, Fernandez said, are optimistic about the 2014 holiday season, which means they will probably be hiring extra people.

“Overall, it looks like it’s going to be good,” Fernandez said. “The only question is what are the jobs going to be? Kohl’s is hiring more people than it usually does, but what will they be doing? Will they be working in stores or in the distribution centers?”

Retailers, who generally expect at least a three percent year-over-year increase in their Christmas revenue, base their temporary hiring on several factors. One is their performance during the year, which is usually a good indication of how the Christmas season will go.

They also consider how many stores, if any, they added during the previous 12 months, and how many temporary hires they made the previous Christmas.

“Generally you add stores during the year – almost everyone expects to add at least one or two stores – and then you add people during the holidays,” Fernandez said. “If the economy is bad you go the other way. But it looks like we’re going to get more hiring this year. The job market feels better now than it has the past few years, which means people have more money to spend.”

Hiring this year will probably be at the same level it was in 2013, said Sarah Cullins, vice president of sales for Corporate Resource Services, a job placement service in Rancho Cucamonga that specializes in the logistics industry.

“Most of the people I talk to say they expect this year to be the same as last year, although no one is ready to set that prediction in stone yet,” Cullins said. “It’s very encouraging that FedEx and Kohl’s are hiring, although I think most of those jobs will be in distribution centers and not in stores.”