- The Kronos Retail Labor Index: (This metric is defined as the percentage of job applications that result in a hiring, normalized within a scale of 0 to 100. A level of 3.0 percent means that for every 100 applications received, three hirings occurred). The Kronos Retail Labor Index increased significantly this month to 3.8 percent, up 28 percent from last month’s figure of 3.0 percent.
- Retail Hiring Level: The retailers representing 27,034 distributed locations across the U.S. that make up the Kronos data sample recorded 56,028 hirings (on a seasonally adjusted basis) in November, a dramatic 77.5 percent increase over the October 2010 seasonally adjusted figure of 31,569. This was also a 9.8 percent increase over the 51,037 hirings that occurred in November 2009.
- Retail Applications Level: The supply of applications was also up significantly, reaching a seasonally adjusted level of 1,457,264 in November. The November figure represented a 38.4 percent increase over the 1,052,765 applications processed in October 2010, and a 6.7 percent increase from the 1,364,968 applications processed in November 2009.
- Retail Employee Retention Rate: Employee retention increased slightly in November with the number of employees remaining on the job 60 days or more rising to 83.2 percent, an increase of .45 percent from October 2010, and a small decrease of .27 percent compared with November 2009.
- Over the past several years, retailers have delayed the timing of their holiday hiring by several weeks. A simple measure of this shift can be seen by calculating hires made in November as a percentage of total hires made between September and November. In 2006, this figure was 33 percent. It increased to 35 percent in 2007, 36 percent in 2008, 37 percent in 2009, and, most dramatically, to 45 percent in 2010.
Supporting Quotes
- Dr. Robert Yerex, chief economist, Kronos
“Despite the significant increase in the Index this month, overall holiday hiring appears to be on a trajectory that will bring it in at a level only slightly above last year’s, and well below the peak holiday season hiring year of 2006.”
“Each year, the ‘peak point’ for holiday hiring comes later and later. We believe this is a result of two factors: retailers not feeling pressure to hire early because of access to a larger pool of workers due to the high unemployment rate; and the increasing use of technology by retailers to better manage the staff they already have.”
