Forget that must-have new toy or the latest home entertainment gizmo. The most sought-after prize for restaurateurs this holiday shopping season may well be a staff large enough to collect all the money consumers intend to spend this November and December.
A new study by the online job referral site Snagajob shows that the percentage of wage earners looking for seasonal work this fourth quarter has dropped like a lump of coal, from 87% in 2020 to 42% this year.
On a broader basis, the number of unfilled jobs in the U.S. economy is running about 70% above pre-pandemic levels, while the tally of active job seekers has dropped by a tenth, the data show. “That’s the greatest gap in recorded history,” Snagajob observed in its report. It noted that about 1.5 job vacancies remain for everyone that’s filled.
While the active workforce is shrinking, demand is revving up. Retail sales this holiday season are likely to surge by as much as 8.2%, according to the National Retail Federation, heightening retailers’ need for the same fill-in workers that restaurants hope to recruit. Across all industries, 58% of employers will be looking to bolster their staff in the fourth quarter.
The Snagajob study cited several other peculiarities to this year that could intensify the chase for labor. For one thing, fears of empty shelves could trigger run on stores much earlier than Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and the traditional start of the season.
“We anticipate the holiday season will start 4-6 weeks earlier as compared to pre-pandemic ‘normal’ timing as consumers get a taste of limited inventory and delayed delivery due to supply chain and labor shortage challenges now (in September)—prompting many to get in the festive shopping spirit early,” the report noted.
Not coincidentally, 75% of the employers surveyed by Snagajob said they intend to have staff lined up for the holidays by the end of September.
Employees are apparently hearing the call. Seventy-nine percent of the surveyed workers said they intend to have their holiday work lined up by the 30th.
They’re more flexible in their post-holiday work plans. About 2 in 5 (41%) said they hope the seasonal gig will turn into a full-time, round-the-calendar job. And 25% indicated they view the seasonal work as a test of whether they’d want to keep working for the company that hired them.
Despite all the indications that competition for labor will be fierce this holiday season, if it isn’t already, the Snagajob study found that the disconnect between supply and demand hasn’t pushed wages to nosebleed heights. When asked how high a wage they’d want in a holiday job, the worker-respondents set $17 an hour as the median.
Still, 66% of the surveyed employers said they plan to bump up what they normally pay in hopes of landing enough seasonal employees.