It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas for those who are looking for part-time, temporary work.
UPS says it will hire 95,000 seasonal employees while FedEx will bring on more than 50,000.
Target stores plans to hire 100,000 workers for the November and December Christmas shopping period, compared to 70,000 last year, a 43% jump. The company says the increase is entirely attributable to the addition of more in-store staff at its 1,816 stores.
Last year Target hired 7,500 workers to toil in distribution centers, but now it plans to hire only 4,500, apparently believing that customer store pickup will make up the difference.
A big portion of the Target workers will assemble and ship orders that customers place online from in-store merchandise. Additional staff at its stores will help customers pick up online orders.
Toys R’Us also says it will hire thousands of part-time workers. Although it did not announce the exact total, it will deploy more than 130,000 to its largest retail and supply chain operations.
The company said the third largest group of 2,500 part-timers will work at DHL’s Groveport, Ohio, warehouse which Toys R’Us uses to fulfill online orders for both Toysrus.com and Babiesrus.com.
Macy's also will add up to 80,000 seasonal employees for the holiday season. It said that 18,000 of these positions will be based in direct-to-consumer fulfillment facilities.
In addition, JCPenney reported that it will add at least 40,000 seasonal employees this holiday season at its 875 retail locations in the U.S.
Walmart said that for the second straight year it will not hire temporary workers this holiday season but will offer extra hours to its existing employees.
Industry analysts predict Christmas retail sales will be up as much as 4.5% over the last year’s holiday season (AA, 10-15-17, P. 2).