Anthony Ayon has seen the stories about labor shortages throughout the U.S. and the challenges that retailers are facing in filling vacancies for beefed-up holiday staffing.
But Ayon is fortunate.
The 32-year-old store director of the Target at Hazel Dell Towne Center said on Thursday that holiday hiring at his location is going well — though additional applicants are still welcome.
The rest of the nation’s retail landscape should be so lucky. Roughly 23 percent of retailers weren’t able to hire all the temporary workers they wanted for the 2017 holiday season, according to a report from global consulting group Korn Ferry. And The Wall Street Journal says 757,000 retail jobs were open across the country in July, about 100,000 more than the same time a year ago.
The overall labor market already was tight before the seasonal hiring season arrived. The national unemployment rate for August was 3.9 percent; in Washington it was 4.1 percent; and in Clark County it was 4.6 percent.
At the three Target stores in Clark County and at every outlet nationwide, the Minneapolis-based retailer is adding incentives to increase its holiday hiring, the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal reported earlier this month. Those incentives include a 10 percent discount at Target stores and an additional 20 percent off wellness products such as fruit, vegetables and workout clothing. Target is also investing more than $2 million in its work.win.give program, which will randomly select one hourly employee team member from each of Target’s stores and distribution centers to receive a $500 holiday gift card and donate $500 to the community organization of their choice, the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal reported.
Target stores across the country held hiring events last weekend, seeking to fill their holiday rosters. Ayon was pleased with the outcome at his store.
“We were really impressed with the amount of applicants and the amount of interviews we conducted,” said Ayon, who’s worked 7 1/2 years for Target and has been the Hazel Dell store director for three years. “There was a ton of good talent. We’re really excited.”
Wages for the new hires starts at $12 an hour, Ayon said, while the company has set a goal to raise starting pay to $15 an hour by 2020.
With a tighter labor market, some retailers are seeing the benefits of enhancing their workplace environment to entice existing workers to stay. Walmart, for example, does not routinely hire seasonal employees.
“For the past two years, we have taken the hours available during the holidays and given them to our current associates,” Tiffany Wilson, Walmart corporate communications director, said in a statement. “It has worked very well for us and the feedback from customers and associates has been overwhelmingly positive, which is why we will do this again during the upcoming holiday season. There may be some hiring on a store-by-store basis, but the majority of our stores will be giving those hours to current associates.”
A holiday hiring survey from Korn Ferry puts the challenging landscape into focus. It reports 67 percent of respondents say recent hikes in minimum wages and market increases in the retail industry have made hiring seasonal staff more difficult, and nearly a fifth (17 percent) say they will see 5 percent to 10 percent fewer applicants this year. One reason that there are fewer seasonal applicants may be that nearly a fifth of respondents say they pay seasonal employees on average 5 percent to 10 percent less than permanent employees.
Approximately 700 people were employed in temporary jobs last year in Clark County — around 400 in general merchandise, 100 in clothing and sundries, 100 in miscellaneous retailers and another 100 in transportation.
Hiring qualified workers in Southwest Washington at this time last year was challenging, said Scott Bailey, regional economist for the Washington Employment Security Department.
“It’s probably more challenging this year in terms of finding workers,” Bailey said. “Unemployment’s tighter. It’s been getting harder, and it’s harder now (to hire workers) than it was a year ago.”
