Retailers are ramping up hiring for the holiday season, but fewer seasonal employees are expected to be taken on this year to help customers in stores and assemble online orders in warehouses.
E-commerce giant Amazon said Thursday it will hire 250,000 full, part-time and seasonal workers for the crucial shopping period, rounding out a series of announcements made in recent weeks by the country’s top retailers.
Amazon is hiring the same number of employees it did last year, similar to Bath & Body Works and Target, which said in September it planned to bring in roughly 100,000 seasonal employees and offer current employees the option to work extra hours during the holiday shopping period.
Meanwhile, the department store Kohl’s encouraged people to apply for positions but stayed mum on its plans, mirroring Walmart, which said it’s been hiring store associates throughout the year and will tap into its own staff when needed during the busy season.
Others have indicated they will scale back their holiday hiring. Macy’s said it would add more than 31,500 seasonal positions this year across its Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury stores, as well as its distribution centers. Last year, the company added 38,000.
This year's demand for seasonal workers comes as economists are watching the U.S. job market for signs of a slowdown. Job openings have come down steadily since peaking at 12.2 million in March 2022. When the economy roared back with unexpected strength from COVID-19 lockdowns, companies scrambled to find enough workers to keep up with customer orders.
The holiday shopping period is the busiest time of year for online and brick-and-mortar retailers, some of which have already announced discount events to entice consumers planning to shop early for gifts.
The consulting firm Deloitte forecasts U.S. retail sales will increase 2.3% to 3.3% between November and January and reach a total of $1.59 trillion. EY-Parthenon, the consulting arm of Ernst & Young, forecasts a similar 3% jump in sales during the traditional November-December period.
However, EY Parthenon expects price increases due to inflation to account for a big chunk of that growth, saying real volume sales will only rise 0.5% year-over-year.
Online sales, a growing segment of retail, is expected to increase 8.4% and reach a record $240.8 billion, according to Adobe, which tracks e-commerce transactions.
“At the moment, retailers appear optimistic for a strong holiday shopping season, which is being reflected in the hiring plans of major retailers and warehouses,” said Andy Challenger, senior vice president at the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Overall, U.S. retailers are expected to add 520,000 new jobs in the final quarter of this year compared to 564,200 in 2023, according to a report released last month by Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The firm, which analyzes non-seasonally adjusted data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, says that’s more than the 509,300 seasonal jobs retailers added in 2022. But it represents the second-lowest total since 2009.
Generally, the labor market has gradually lost momentum since the Federal Reserve hiked its benchmark interest rate numerous times in 2022 and 2023 to combat high inflation. Last month, the Fed cut its key rate for the first time in more than four years. The move reflected its new focus on bolstering the job market.
The retail industry nevertheless may encounter challenges filling openings in the coming weeks and months “due to the demands of the job and pay,” Challenger said.
To scoop up employees, companies like Macy’s and JCPenney as well as sporting goods stores Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s are recruiting workers through nationwide hiring events. JCPenney plans to hire more than 10,000 store associates, roughly the same as last year. Macy’s said it would offer on-the-spot interviews during its first event, which took place last week in its stores and warehouses. The company plans to hold three more events this year.
“We are finding strong application flow,” Macy’s said, adding that nearly a third of its recent hires were people who had worked at the company before.
Amid the growth in online shopping, the delivery giant UPS said it planned to hire 125,000 seasonal workers for the holiday rush, up from 100,000 last year.
Radial, an e-commerce company that powers deliveries for brands like Calvin Klein and Express, said it intended to hire fewer people but also planned to scale its staff based on real-time demand. That approach allows the company to meet customers' needs “without overcommitting," said Billy Peterson, a senior vice president at Radial.
On the buyer side, consumers have been resilient with their spending while also showing signs of stress, with credit-card debt rising and savings rates falling, trends that could weigh on spending in future months.
Retail sales ticked up from July to August, after jumping the most in a year and a half the previous month. At the same time, consumers have been more prudent about their purchases and pushing back against high prices by trading down to store brands or seeking out deals for products.
However, holiday shoppers could see even higher prices on products if a port workers’ strike that has shut down all the major dockyards on the Eastern seaboard of the U.S. and the Gulf coast persists for more than a month.
FILE - Walmart workers organize merchandise at a Superstore in Secaucus, New Jersey, July 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez, File)
FILE - Amazon employees load packages on carts before being put on to trucks for distribution to customers for Amazon's annual Prime Day event at an Amazon's DAX7 delivery station on July 16, 2024, in South Gate, Calif. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)
An Israeli airstrike on an apartment in central Beirut has killed nine people, according to Lebanon's health ministry. Israel has been pounding areas of the country where the Hezbollah militant group has a strong presence since late September, but has rarely struck in the heart of the capital.
There was no warning before the strike late Wednesday, which hit an apartment in central Beirut not far from the United Nations headquarters, the prime minister’s office and parliament. Hezbollah’s civil defense unit said seven of its members were killed.
The strike came as Israel was pursuing a ground incursion into Lebanon against Hezbollah, while also conducting strikes in Gaza that killed dozens, including children. The Israeli military said eight soldiers have died in the conflict in southern Lebanon.
Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire across the Lebanon border almost daily since the day after Hamas’ cross-border attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 Israelis and took 250 others hostage. Israel declared war on the militant group in the Gaza Strip in response. More than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in the territory, and just over half the dead have been women and children, according to local health officials.
Here is the latest:
BEIRUT —Lebanon’s minister of public works and transport says all the country’s border crossing with Syria function under the supervision of state institutions.
Ali Hamie spoke to reporters hours after the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman posted on X that Lebanon’s Hezbollah group is trying to transport military equipment through the Masnaa border crossing with Syria.
“All border crossings, the first among them the Masnaa border crossing” are under the monitoring of state institutions including the transport ministry, customs authorities, the General Security Directorate and the Lebanese army.
Israeli military spokesperson, Avchay Adraee, called on Lebanese authorities earlier Thursday to conduct inspections on trucks crossing its eastern border and to turn back any vehicle found to be containing combat equipment.
“The Lebanese State is responsible for its official border crossings and is able to prevent Hezbollah from passing through these crossings,” Adraee said on X.
In the same post, Adraee said Israeli forces bombed a truck on Sunday packed with weapons that Hezbollah was trying to smuggle into Lebanon. No further details about this airstrike were made public.
In recent weeks, the Israeli air force has struck hundreds of targets across Lebanon, including the eastern border area and the Bekaa valley, areas where Hezbollah has a strong presence.
Analysts have long accused the Iran-backed group of transporting weapons across the porous Lebanese-Syrian border.
BERUIT — Lebanese Health Ministry Firas Abiad said Thursday that Israeli strikes that have hit health facilities and workers are in “violation of international law and treaties.”
“This is a war crime, there is no doubt about that,” Abiad said, speaking to journalists Thursday, after an overnight Israeli strike on an apartment building in Beirut hit a Hezbollah health center and killed seven civilian first responders affiliated with the group and after a separate strike wounded Red Cross paramedics evacuating wounded people in southern Lebanon.
“The argument that some vehicles or hospitals had weapons or something else in them, these are old false arguments and lies we heard before in Gaza,” Abiad said. “International laws are clear in protecting these people - I mean, paramedics. Who gave Israel the right to be the judge and the executioner at the same time?”
BEIRUT -- An Israeli airstrike on a Beirut southern suburb struck Thursday the building housing the media office of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group.
The airstrike destroyed the building housing the Media Relations office of Hezbollah in the Mawad neighborhood on the southern edge of Beirut.
Hezbollah official told The Associated Press that employees of the group’s media office are fine and no one was hurt.
In southern Lebanon, Israeli fire at a Lebanese army post in the town of Bint Jbeil killed a Lebanese soldier, raising to two the number of members of the Lebanese military killed on Thursday.
The Lebanese army said in a statement that troops “open fire at the source of” the attack. It did not elaborate.
A Lebanese security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of regulations said that the army post was hit by artillery fire.
BRUSSELS — Belgium’s VTM broadcaster says that one of its television reporters and a cameraman have been attacked in central Beirut while reporting on the war between Israel and Hezbollah.
VTM said that correspondent Robin Ramaekers and cameraman Stijn De Smet were working on a report on Wednesday evening about a bombing in the Lebanese capital when they were attacked in unclear circumstances.
“Stijn is currently in a hospital in Beirut where he is being treated for a leg wound. Robin is also still being cared for, in another hospital, for some fractures to the face,” a statement said. It underlined that the cause of the attack is not yet known.
VTM said the two men have worked in conflict zones for more than a decade. Lebanon’s Information Minister Ziad Makary said only that he is “following” the situation
MADRID — Spain’s defense ministry says its two planes sent to Beirut to evacuate Spanish civilians have taken off and are heading to an airbase near Madrid.
Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles said that between 400 and 500 of the around 1,000 Spaniards registered as living in Lebanon are being airlifted out. The government has urged all Spaniards to leave and is offering to assist those who say they want to be evacuated.
Robles said that a third plane could be sent if needed.
Spain also has 676 soldiers in Lebanon deployed under a United Nations peacekeeping mission. Robles said that the troops are staying put until otherwise ordered by the U.N. command.
ISTANBUL — Hundreds of people leaving Lebanon arrived in southern Turkey Thursday.
A ship carrying over 300 passengers who boarded the vessel in the Lebanese city of Tripoli docked at a port in Mersin on the country’s Mediterranean coast, according to Turkish news agency IHA.
IHA said the Med Lines ship transporting foreign nationals was the third to arrive at the Mersin port in recent days.
The passengers then travel onward to their home countries, IHA reported.
The increasing violence in Lebanon is a significant escalation in the war in the Middle East, this time between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
BEIRUT —The Lebanese Red Cross says an Israeli strike killed four of its paramedics and a Lebanese army soldier as they were evacuating wounded people from the south. It says the convoy near the village of Taybeh, which was accompanied by Lebanese troops, was targeted Thursday despite coordinating its movements with U.N. peacekeepers.
BEIRUT — The Israeli military has ordered the evacuation of villages and towns in southern Lebanon that are north of a United Nations-declared buffer zone established after the 2006 war. The warning issued Thursday signaled a possible broadening of Israel’s incursion into southern Lebanon, which until now has been confined to areas close to the border.
BEIRUT —Lebanon’s Health Ministry Thursday said that at least nine people were killed in an Israeli strike in central Beirut, as it is also running DNA tests on remains they have obtained to identify others.
Hezbollah said that seven paramedics and rescue workers from its medical arm the Islamic Health Committee were killed in the strike that hit its office in Bashoura. The Health Ministry said 14 others were wounded in the strike early Thursday.
Prior to the attack, the ministry said that 55 people were killed and 156 others were wounded in Israeli strikes over Lebanon on Wednesday.
The frequent strikes in Beirut’s southern suburbs as well as occasional strikes in central Beirut have exacerbated Lebanon’s displacement crisis. The government estimated days ago that some one million people are currently displaced in the cash-strapped country.
Environment Minister Nasser Yassin, who is spearheading the government’s response efforts to the war, told local media that some 167,000 Syrians left Lebanon over the past 24 hours alone. The Associated Press could not independently confirm.
JERUSALEM — The Israeli military said Thursday that it killed a senior Hamas leader in an airstrike in the Gaza Strip around three months ago.
It said that a strike on an underground compound in northern Gaza killed Rawhi Mushtaha and two other Hamas commanders, Sameh Siraj and Sameh Oudeh.
There was no immediate comment from Hamas.
The military said the three commanders had taken refuge in a fortified underground compound in northern Gaza that served as a command and control center.
It said Mushtaha was a close associate of Yahya Sinwar, the top leader of Hamas who helped mastermind the Oct. 7 attack into Israel that triggered the war.
Sinwar is believed to be alive and in hiding inside Gaza.
NICOSIA, Cyprus — The British government chartered more flights to help U.K. nationals leave Lebanon, a day after an evacuation flight left Beirut.
The government said in a statement that the flights will continue as “long as the security situation allows” and that it’s working to increase capacity on commercial flights for British nationals.
U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey on Wednesday visited a British military base on Cyprus where around 700 troops, Foreign Office staff and Border Force officers have been deployed to a British military base in Cyprus to help with evacuation plans.
British nationals and their spouses, partners and children under the age of 18 are eligible. Dependents who aren’t British nationals will need a valid visa granting a maximum six-month stay in the U.K.
BEIRUT — An Israeli strike in the Lebanese capital Beirut killed seven health and rescue workers, an Islamic health organization said.
The airstrike in the residential Bashoura district targeted an apartment in a multi-story building that houses an office of the Health Society, a group of civilian first responders affiliated to Hezbollah.
It was the closest strike to the central downtown district of Beirut, where the United Nations and government offices are located.
It was the second airstrike to hit central Beirut this week and the second to directly target the Health Society in 24 hours. No Israeli warning was issued to the area before it was hit. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the strike in central Beirut or the allegations it used phorphorous bombs.
Israel has mostly concentrated its airstrikes in south and eastern Lebanon, as well as the southern suburbs of Beirut where Hezbollah has a strong presence, but its attacks have spanned the entire country and killed many civilians.
Beirut’s southern suburbs also saw heavy bombardment overnight in areas where the Israeli army had earlier issued a warning online for residents to evacuate.
TOKYO — Japan on Thursday dispatched two Self Defense Force planes to prepare for a possible airlift of Japanese citizens from Lebanon.
Two C-2 transport aircraft are expected to arrive in Jordan and Greece on Friday, Japan NHK national television reported.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters that there has been no report of injury involving the about 50 Japanese nationals in Lebanon.
Japan dispatched SDF aircraft in October and November 2023 to evacuate more than 100 Japanese and South Korean citizens from Israel.
SYDNEY — Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Thursday her government had booked 500 seats on commercial aircraft for Australian citizens, permanent residents and their families to leave Lebanon on Saturday.
The seats are available to 1,700 Australians and their families known to be in Lebanon on two flights from Beirut to Cyprus, Wong said.
“What I would say to Australians who wish to leave, please take whatever option is available to you,” Wong told reporters in Geelong, Australia.
“Please do not wait for your preferred route,” she added.
A Hezbollah paramedic walks between debris after an airstrike hit an apartment in a multistory building, in central Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Lebanese women stand in front an apartment in a multistory building hit by Israeli airstrike, in central Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
A destroyed apartment in a multistory building hit by Israeli airstrike, in central Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Hezbollah paramedics walk between debris after an airstrike hit an apartment in a multistory building, in central Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
A woman reacts in front an apartment in a multistory building hit by Israeli airstrike, in central Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
This image from United Nations Television, shows Israel Ambassador Danny Danon during a meeting of the United Nations Security Council, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024. (UNTV via AP)
Soldiers carry the coffin of Israeli Army Capt. Eitan Yitzhak Oster, who was killed in action in Lebanon, during his funeral at Mt. Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)
An Israeli Apache helicopter releases flares near the Israeli-Lebanon border, as seen from northern Israel, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)
Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Police stand guard at the site of an apparent Israeli airstrike in Damascus, Syria, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
Workers clean at the site of an apparent Israeli airstrike in Damascus, Syria, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
People collecting remains of victims after an airstrike that hit an apartment in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
A firefighter stands in front of an apartment hit by an Israeli airstrike, in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
