- 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 this month from 3.85 percent in January to 4.20 percent in February. This is the highest the Index has been since August 2008 when it reached 4.45 percent.
- Retail Hiring Level: The retailers representing 27,034 distributed locations across the U.S. that make up the Kronos® data sample recorded 37,129 hirings (on a seasonally adjusted basis) in January, a significant 41.61 percent decrease from the December 2010 seasonally adjusted figure of 63,587. The January 2011 figure represents a 9.61 percent increase over the 33,873 hirings that occurred in January 2010.
- Retail Applications Level: The supply of applications also decreased significantly to a seasonally adjusted level of 883,843 in January. The January figure represented a 46.55 percent decrease from the 1,653,520 applications processed in December 2010 and a 39.41 percent decrease from the 1,458,728 applications processed in January 2010.
- Retail Employee Retention Rate: Employee retention, the percentage of employees remaining on the job 60 days or more, was 82.50 percent in January 2011, a decrease of 1.47 percent from December 2010 and the first notable drop in the past 12 months.
- 2010 Year in Review: Retailers reduced their overall labor capacity by 9.7 percent in 2010.
Supporting Quotes
- Dr. Robert Yerex, chief economist, Kronos Incorporated “Applications and hiring were down significantly this month, but the combination pushed the Index up to its highest point since August 2008. Overall, 2010 was a year in which we saw retailers reduce their overall labor capacity by almost 10 percent.”
