Dive Brief:
- Postings for seasonal or holiday-related jobs on Indeed reached their lowest point since 2019, researchers at the platform’s Indeed Hiring Lab said in an Oct. 2 analysis. Conversely, job-seeker interest in seasonal work is up 19% from 2022, the highest level in years.
- It’s the first time in the post-pandemic era that the number of seasonal openings fell below pre-pandemic levels, according to Indeed, with September openings down 3% from the same time in 2019. The trend signals employers “are feeling confident that their current workforce will be sufficient” to weather the holidays, the company said.
- Meanwhile, the trend of higher interest in seasonal work from job seekers may indicate that workers are more comfortable with the idea of in-person work after years of public health emergencies, Indeed said.
Dive Insight:
Indeed’s figures suggest a relatively quiet hiring market during what is traditionally an active recruiting period for retailers and other businesses that rely on the last three months of the year to drive sales. Yet, the trend of lower hiring projections is an ongoing one, as employers largely tempered their hiring expectations going into the summer as well.
There are outliers; retail’s usual suspects, most notably Amazon, have announced expansive recruitment plans for the holidays. The e-commerce company said last month that it would hire 250,000 workers to fill a mix of full-time, part-time and seasonal roles to support holiday operations, up from Amazon’s 2022 seasonal hiring goal of 150,000 workers.
Competitors Target and Macy’s are also on the lookout for seasonal employees, with Target announcing plans last month to hire some 100,000 seasonal workers — similar to recent years — while Macy’s said it would aim to hire 38,000 full- and part-time positions, which is down from the 41,000 it planned in 2022, Retail Dive reported.
Heightened worker interest may, as Indeed posited, be reflective of declining workplace COVID-19 concerns, but economic factors are likely also at play. The company’s Indeed Flex division found in 2022 that interest in seasonal employment increased ahead of that year’s holidays in large part due to inflation. More than one-quarter of workers in Indeed Flex’s survey said they were looking for seasonal work to beef up their incomes.
