Employment

Could the tariffs ruin the holidays for shoppers?

Posted on by katiecmorgan
Washington Post
By Rachel Siegel

October 3

“Get out the Ouija board.”

That’s how one retail analyst summed up the tricky task of predicting what lies ahead for retailers and shoppers this holiday season. Analysts say there’s ample reason to expect record-breaking sales on the back of a strong economy, a historically low unemployment rate and upward-ticking wages.

But that’s all hedged by a hefty unknown: the threat of ongoing tariffs and an escalating trade war. President Trump’s latest round of tariffs have kicked in at 10 percent and are set to rise to 25 percent at the start of 2019. Nearly 6,000 products — including electronics and other go-to gifts — will see price increases that, in time, are expected to pass from retailers to consumers.

And while it’s unlikely that the brunt of those price hikes will take a toll over the next few months, experts agree that the sheer concern over how long the tariffs will last, and to what degree, could act as a Grinch to holiday shoppers.

“Business doesn’t manage uncertainty well, nor does the consumer, and there is no way prices don’t get passed through the consumer,” said Mark Cohen, director of retail studies at Columbia Business School. “The problem I have is, who knows on a day-to-day basis where this is headed?”

The retail industry is still optimistic. On Wednesday, the National Retail Federation announced it is expecting retail sales in November and December to increase between 4.3 and 4.8 percent over 2017 results, to as much as $720.89 billion. That forecast compares with an average annual increase of 3.9 percent over the past five years. (If Labor Day is any indicator, Americans spent a record $2 billion online then alone.)

But for comparison, holiday sales in 2017 rose 5.3 percent over the year before, totaling $687.87 billion, according to the NRF.

In mid-September, Deloitte anticipated retail holiday sales to increase 5 to 5.6 percent over last year’s shopping season — totaling at least $1.1 trillion between November and January. Rod Sides, leader of Deloitte’s U.S. retail and distribution practice, said shoppers are unlikely to make their shopping decisions based on geopolitical issues, such as global trade.

“A lot of it comes down to when they look in their checkbook or their pocket,” Sides said. “If they have a few extra dollars, whether it be the stock markets to the election to tariffs, it typically doesn’t trickle down.”

[‘This could be catastrophic’: Small businesses say new tariffs will make it even harder to compete]

At the same time, retailers and industry groups have made their opposition to the tariffs clear. Last month, Walmart sent a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer cautioning that additional tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods would strike a blow. Walmart — the largest retailer in the country — wrote that the “immediate impact will be to raise prices on consumers and tax American businesses and manufacturers.” Target chief executive Brian Cornell said the company was “concerned about anything that would cause higher prices on everyday products for American families.”

That’s in concert with arguments from industry groups that say the tariffs will trigger price increases, even if not by this Thanksgiving or Christmas. The Retail Industry Leaders Association, an industry lobbying group, wrote to Lighthizer in September requesting the removal of more than 650 tariff lines from the proposed list of products subject to the latest wave of tariffs. Any tariffs on consumer goods proposed by Trump’s administration, the group wrote, are “nothing more than a hidden tax.”

Larger retailers have long since secured low-priced inventory to get them through the holidays and into the new year. But Hun Quach, vice president for international trade at RILA, noted that as the Chinese tariffs drag on, businesses large and small will be forced to restructure their supply chains. Changing the source on products as simple as plastic stickers can take as long as a year, she said.

“The pricing impact won’t hit immediately,” she said. “I think a lot of this uncertainty is about how long these tariffs are going to be in place.”

There’s also the question of whether retailers, embracing a strong economy and shoppers with money to spend, could increase prices anyway. But Cohen said that, even with signs pointing toward a strong holiday season, “the prospect of raising prices across the board is extremely problematic. There’s no getting away with that.”

Still, retailers will have to grapple with questions of when to time price increases on goods that will feel the full brunt of the tariffs at the start of 2019.

“Do you start to adjust prices now or do you wait until January?” Cohen said. “That’s a difficult decision.”

Mark Rosenbaum, department chair and professor of retailing at the University of South Carolina, said that many retailers placed their holiday-season orders over the summer, and that it would be unusual for them to alter the prices now because of the tariffs.

Jack Kleinhenz, chief economist at the National Retail Federation, noted that many of the tariffs apply to goods that have “already been ordered, and have been shipped and are on their way.” The “precise effects of the tariffs are not yet completely clear,” but any impacts are likely to hit closer to the start of 2019. The tariffs may hit prices for jewelry by Valentine’s Day, for example, but that may be the earliest shoppers will feel a difference.

In the meantime, retailers and shoppers will have reason to stay merry.

“Thinking about the ability to spend — the data shows that we are in a good place,” Kleinhenz said. “The picture looks very good.”

U.S. retailer group sees 2018 holiday sales up more than 4 percent

Posted on by katiecmorgan

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. holiday sales in 2018 will increase 4.3 percent to 4.8 percent boosted by a strong economy but will be slower than a year ago when consumer spending surged to a 12-year high, according to a forecast from a leading retail industry group.

The National Retail Federation (NRF) said holiday sales growth will be higher than an average increase of 3.9 percent over the past five years but slower than the 5.3 percent growth witnessed a year earlier when consumer spending grew the most since 2005 and was boosted by tax cuts.

“Last year’s strong results were thanks to growing wages, stronger employment and higher confidence, complemented by anticipation of tax cuts that led consumers to spend more than expected,” NRF Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz said.

“With this year’s forecast, we continue to see strong momentum from consumers as they do the heavy lifting in supporting our economy,” he said.

The combination of more jobs, improved wages, tamed inflation and an increase in net worth all provide the impetus to spend, he added.

The retail trade group said it expects sales for the last two months of the year between $717.45 billion and $720.89 billion, excluding autos, gasoline and dining out. Holiday sales in 2017 were $687.87 billion.

NRF’s forecast is one of the most closely watched benchmarks ahead of the holiday season, when retailers like Amazon.com Inc, Walmart Stores Inc and Target Corp generate an outsized portion of their profits and sales.

The last two months of the year can account for 20 percent to 40 percent of annual sales for many retailers.

The NRF forecast follows other estimates from companies like AlixPartners, which says sales will grow in between 3.1 percent and 4.1 percent as “2017 will be a tough year to follow.” Forecasts from companies like Deloitte and PwC expect holiday retail sales to grow around 5 percent.

NRF also said Wednesday that it expects seasonal employment by retailers to reach between 585,000 and 650,000 jobs, up from 582,500 in 2017.

Cleveland’s economy fails to gain traction

Posted on by katiecmorgan

A better job of measuring performance is key to turning around region’s fortunes

Illustration by Daniel Zakroczemski for Crain’s

While there is some question about whether he actually said it and exactly how he said it, business thinker Peter Drucker is credited with a mantra that has wide acceptance in management circles: “You can’t improve what you don’t measure.”

Expanding on that maxim, the need to better measure the strengths and weaknesses of the Northeast Ohio economy, as a prelude to improving it, may end up being a key takeaway from Jon Pinney’s June 8 speech at the City Club of Cleveland. There, the managing partner of the Kohrman Jackson & Krantz law firm pronounced that the Northeast Ohio economy was “dead last or near the bottom in most economic metrics.”

He cited recent national media coverage, such as Forbes’ “Best Cities for Jobs”survey, which ranked Cleveland last out of 71 major metro areas, and Business Insider’s ranking of the country’s 40 best and worst regional economies, where Cleveland also placed last.

As Business Insider reported, Cleveland had the highest February 2017 unemployment rate, at 5.7%, among the 40 biggest metro areas, and its job growth was the second-lowest, with non-farm payroll employment rising just 0.3% between February 2016 and February 2017.

The struggles of the region’s economy are nothing new. Some data make that point when they are periodically announced, such as Census Bureau reports that show the region’s population decline and when the Labor Department announces the monthly unemployment rate.

Pinney was highlighting the need to pay more attention on a regular basis to those and other measurements of the region’s performance and to compare that performance to other regions. He closed his comments by making a “grand challenge” to business and civic leaders to face up to the region’s poor showing when compared to the rest of the country and find solutions to the region’s economic sluggishness.

Before that can happen, however, the region needs better data — data that have not been as readily available in Northeast Ohio as they are in some other areas.

In Columbus, for example, Columbus 2020, the region’s economic development agency, posts on its website updated monthly data on the size and composition of the regional workforce, including a graph which shows if the employed workforce is growing or declining and a pie chart of which industries employ the most people.

It’s a barebones example of what economists call an “economic dashboard.”

Greater MSP, an economic development agency in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region, goes further. Its “Regional Indicators Dashboard” tracks changes in more than 50 economic, environmental and social outcomes and how the region ranks with a peer group of regional economies. It includes everything from average weekly wages to percentage of the population with a college degree to the cost of electricity.

Don Iannone, a Highland Heights-based economic development consultant, produced a dashboard for Ashtabula County after becoming CEO of the Growth Partnership for Ashtabula County in 2014. It provided a wide variety of regularly updated information for several years covering data on employment and business formation in the county.

But because the economy was struggling, business and civic leaders weren’t always happy to see their economic difficulties on display on the internet.

“People didn’t like the bad news. They just didn’t,” he said. But to him, it was a necessary regular assessment. “I said, it’s actually like going in for a physical and the doctor gives you all the news, good and bad,” Iannone said.

In 2005, the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland produced an economic dashboard proposal for the Fund for Our Economic Future, a collaboration of foundations and other philanthropies that focuses on regional economic development. The goal was “to encourage and advance a common and highly focused regional economic development agenda that can lead to a long-term economic transformation of the Northeast Ohio (NEO) economy.”

The work, said one economist who worked on the project, was noble, but was overwhelmed by other priorities at the time.

“The great recession had a major influence on how we could approach this activity,” said Jack Kleinhenz, an economist now running Kleinhenz & Associates in Cleveland Heights. “In 2005, the economy started to go in the tank and everybody was preoccupied, I hate to say it, more by survival.”

That effort is being revived.

Earlier this year, the Fund for Our Economic Future released “2 Tomorrows,” a report on the challenges facing the 18-county Northeast Ohio economy. “We are not innovating and investing to the level needed to drive and sustain global competitiveness,” the report stated. “We need to change what we consider success.”

Beyond basic economic concerns, the report focused on the concentration of poverty in the region and on racial inequalities in economic outcomes and challenges to create good jobs and rising incomes across the region.

It also offers a set of measurements to track how well the region is succeeding at meeting those challenges. “What gets measured gets done,” the study argued.

“In ‘2 Tomorrows,’ we put forth what we think is an effective way to measure the economy that looks like the right things,” fund president Brad Whitehead said. “We’ll be doing it quarterly, and it’s an open question whether anyone else will salute it.”

Its measurements look beyond the basic economic metrics and create a “Growth & Opportunity Scorecard” that creates measurements for metrics such as the growth of young businesses, the effort to improve prosperity and how well economic growth is shared across all people in the region.

“We began by thinking, blank slate, what would a successful regional economy look like?” said Peter Truog, director of civic innovation and insight at the fund. He called it an effort to “look at a group of peer cities and see how we stack up.”

Team Northeast Ohio, the regional economic development nonprofit, does gather information on the region’s economy and workforce. While it issues quarterly data to news media, it uses the data primarily to encourage businesses and site selectors considering expanding in the region.

Its president, Bill Koehler, does see the need for greater sharing of the information its researchers gather and would like to see some organization, not his, take a lead role in gathering and sharing that information.

“We need a common place where (this) data resides,” Koehler said. “But even if there is a centralized place where all the data is, we still have to have a common understanding of what the right performance drivers and metrics are, and all of us have to align our strategies around that. It’s not happening enough and people are starting to recognize and challenging those of us in the economic development community to take on the responsibility of doing a better job.”

Toys “R” Us to start liquidation sales; economist says closings don’t represent entire industry

Posted on by katiecmorgan

CLEVELAND, Ohio – This week, while Toys “R” Us is expected to start liquidation sales and Claire’s announces filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, Cleveland-based chief economist for the National Retail Federation says the overall retail landscape continues to shift but is looking healthier than last year.

Jack Kleinhenz, Ph.D and chief economist for the world’s largest retail trade association, said while the rash of reported national retail store closings and job losses are real, he wouldn’t say they are a direct indication that the retail industry is moving backward.

“I think there is misinformation or a misunderstanding about the health of the retail industry,” said Kleinhenz, who is also principal and chief economist of Kleinhenz and Associates, a Cleveland-based registered investment advisory firm that specializes in financial consulting and wealth management services.

“We recognize these store closings are happening, but overall we’ve got to be careful to not focus just on store closings because other areas are performing,” he said, noting that in February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 50,000 jobs were added in retail nationwide including auto sales and gas sales. “If we take out those two categories then, still 46,000 retail jobs were added in the month of February.”

However, according to U.S. Labor Department data, job loss can’t be ignored. Between 2001 and 2016, jobs at traditional department stores fell 46 percent. For perspective, that’s a bigger drop than other troubled industries such as coal mining (32 percent drop) and factory employment (25 percent drop) during the same time span.

MarketWatch reported that in 2017, department stores alone lost 29,900 jobs, while general merchandising stores cut 15,700 workers. In addition, last year’s BLS data also showed retail discharges and layoffs grew to a total of 212,000 nationwide – the highest level in nearly two years.

Kleinhenz said based on all of the area data he’s analyzed and the NRF’s forecast, they still believe 2018 will be a stronger year for retail.

Some department stores are moving toward cost fulfillment centers, while other e-commerce retailers, discount stores, luxury goods, and even some small businesses with specialized niches are growing.

In Northeast Ohio for instance, Amazon is building a fulfillment center in Euclid in what once was a retail strip that included a shuttered Toys “R” Us. The dead mall will be replaced by an Amazon fulfillment center, scheduled to open in 2019.

A similar, but larger, project is under construction and set to open next year in North Randall, where Randall Park Mall once stood. Between the two Amazon facilities, the company will employ more than 3,000 people.

“The landscape is changing and the way the industry is operating is changing. They’re looking to be more cost efficient. Ultimately retailers want to deliver good price and value, which is no different than any other industry,” he said.

“Undoubtedly they’re facing significant competition and consequently they need to change the way they’re operating given the environment.”

RETAIL CLOSINGS

The national retail landscape is changing rapidly with a great deal of upheaval as brick-and-mortar stores continue to struggle to change and adapt in the highly competitive digital age.

Claire’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing on Monday, is the latest in a string of mall-based stores shutting down in what’s fast becoming one of the biggest waves of retail closures in decades.

But mall-based stores aren’t the only casualties of consumers increasingly more comfortable ordering products online. Toys “R” Us, another company left deep in debt from a leveraged buyout, said last week that it was liquidating its 735 stores in the United States. The bankrupt retailer is closing one-fifth of its U.S. outlets, which could end up being more than 180 stores including locations in Mentor, Western Hills, Dayton and Dublin, Ohio. Liquidation sales were to begin Thursday, but were delayed this morning until possibly Friday or later.

In 2017, nearly 9,000 stores closed across retail sectors. Cushman & Wakefield said that number will be between 10,000 and 11,000 doors this year–and that’s fewer than the 13,000 the analysts initially forecast, thanks in part to Simon Properties’ legal action attempting to block Starbucks from closing Teavana locations.

“Not everyone is shrinking! Off-price apparel, discounters, warehouse club stores and dollar stores will continue to post record growth,” Garrick Brown, vice president of Retail Intelligence for the Americas, said in a January blog.

“Grocery stores and most restaurants will continue to account for growth, even as the weakest concepts will increasingly struggle with a saturated marketplace,” he said.

Still, last year was a record year for both store closings and retail bankruptcies. Dozens of retailers including Macy’s, Sears, and J.C. Penney shuttered thousands of stores — far exceeding recessionary levels — and 50 chains filed for bankruptcy.

The commercial real estate firm CoStar has estimated that nearly a quarter of malls in the U.S., or roughly 310 of the nation’s 1,300 shopping malls, are at high risk of losing an anchor tenant. Chains that have confirmed they will be closing locations in 2018 include Bon-Ton, Gap, Sears-Kmart and Walgreens.

In January, Walmart announced plans to close 63 Sam’s Club stores across the U.S. including one in Cincinnati.

Teen retailer Abercrombie & Fitch is bouncing back by cutting its stores. The New Albany, Ohio-based company was praised by analysts easier this month after it announced positive same-store sales growth in its fourth-quarter results. Same-store sales were up 9 percent overall at the company, boosted by 11 percent growth at Hollister and 5 percent at the Abercrombie brand itself.

But at the same time, the company also announced it would be closing up to 60 Abercrombie and Hollister stores in 2018. Closing store locations have not been identified yet.

By Marcia Pledger, The Plain Dealer

cleveland.com

Retailers are hiring more people. One reason: Home renovations.

Posted on by katiecmorgan

The nation’s unemployment rate remained unchanged in February, but there was one bright spot many economists weren’t expecting: an influx of retail jobs.

In all, retailers added 50,300 jobs in February — four times the number from the month before — even as the U.S. unemployment rate stayed steady at 4.1 percent.

One reason for the gains, economists said: Americans are increasingly renovating their homes instead of buying new ones, helping create thousands of retail jobs at companies like Home Depot and Lowe’s.

Building-material stores hired more than 10,000 workers in February to keep up with booming demand, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Those positions accounted for more than one-fifth of the total retail jobs added last month.

The gains are part of a larger trend. Building-material and garden supply stores have added roughly 49,000 jobs in the past year.

“This is a housing repair and remodeling story — and not just because of the recent hurricanes and fires,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at professional-services firm Grant Thornton. “In many cases, people are realizing it’s cheaper and easier to add on to their homes than to buy new ones.”

Low housing supply and high costs, particularly in larger cities, are prompting prospective buyers to think twice before buying a house, Swonk said. Other factors, such as rising interest rates and changes to mortgage-related tax credits, are also contributing to their decisions.

“Add to that the housing stock is older and more decrepit than it used to be, and you’re seeing a boom in remodeling,” Swonk said, adding that she is in the process of replacing the roof on her Chicago-area home.

Homeowners are projected to spend $340 billion on home improvements and repairs this year, up 8 percent from last year, marking the highest increase since before the Great Recession, according to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Increased demand is also helping create new jobs, albeit low-wage positions that are often seasonal. Home Depot announced plans to hire 80,000 workers last month, while Lowe’s said it would hire more than 53,000 seasonal employees to prepare for spring.

“What’s striking about these numbers is that they are unaffected by online retail,” said Jed Kolko, chief economist at the online jobs site Indeed. “Most people aren’t buying their lumber or potting soil online.”

But wages remain low: The median pay for retail workers is about $11.01 per hour, or $22,900 a year, according to BLS data.

The jump in employment is a departure from recent months: The retail sector lost 25,900 jobs in December but added 14,800 in January. (Warehouse jobs, which are not counted in the retail figures, grew by about 400 positions in February.)

“I did not expect a large increase in February, in all honesty,” said Jack Kleinhenz, chief economist for the National Retail Federation, a trade group that lobbies on behalf of the industry. “This was a substantial increase at the industry level.”

General-merchandise stores such as Walmart, Target and Costco added 17,700 jobs, while clothing and accessories stores hired 14,900. A number of those newly created positions, economists said, were probably focused on retailers’ growing online and mobile businesses.

Walmart, for example, has hired more than 18,000 personal shoppers in recent years as it builds up its shop-online, pick-up-in-store service, executives said on a Tuesday call with reporters.

“Companies are putting more people on the floor,” Swonk said. “We don’t have a handle on whether they’re hiring for online operations vs. in-store, but we know they’re hiring.”

By Abha Bhattarai

The Washington Post

Year-over-year October jobs drop 0.4% in region

Posted on by katiecmorgan

Although the uptick shouldn’t be seen as part of a long-term trend, the increase of an estimated 1,250 jobs in the goods-producing sector of the Northeast Ohio economy in October largely offset a decline in service-sector payrolls for the month, resulting in a net regional loss of 57 jobs from September, according to the latest Crain’s Employment Report (CER).

That’s a barely measurable percentage of the total October payrolls, which were 1,168,796 on a seasonally adjusted basis.

Meanwhile, service-providing firms appear to have decreased payrolls by 1,306 during October. Importantly, though, Jack Kleinhenz, the Cleveland Heights economist who developed the CER model, reports that the service sector is showing a gain of 972 jobs over the level in October 2016.

Overall, estimated October payrolls were down 5,255 from a year ago, a 0.4% loss. The larger service sector employed an estimated 963,241 people in October; the goods-producing sector had 205,555 workers on payrolls.

“The recent gain in the manufacturing sector is being helped by strong foreign demand and a softer dollar,” Kleinhenz said. “The global economy has shifted into higher gear, and foreign demand for U.S. goods has accelerated, reaching their highest level since December 2014.”

Kleinhenz noted that new factory orders were up 1.4% in September, the latest month available, and that new orders for manufactured goods jumped nearly 7% since September 2016, “a healthy pickup that is consistent with recent business optimism.”

The one-month increase in jobs in the goods-producing sector — largely comprising the manufacturing and construction industries — comes on the heels of a month-to-month loss of 3,544 between August and September. In addition, the sector has lost about 6,228 jobs since October 2016, according to CER data.

The year-over-year loss is part of an expected long-term decline in manufacturing jobs, according to a recent report from Team Northeast Ohio.

The business development nonprofit forecasts that the number of jobs in the manufacturing sector in the 18-county region of Northeast Ohio it surveys will decline from 265,437 in 2017 to 236,179 by 2027, a drop of 11%.

The flat employment seen in the seven-county region compares unfavorably to a statewide survey taken by ADP LLC. ADP’s report estimates that Ohio added 8,280 jobs in October. ADP is a national business outsourcing firm that surveys 406,000 U.S. companies monthly and breaks down the data to the state level for its report.

SEASONALLY ADJUSTED DATA

*/

Month Non-Farm Small (1-49) Mid-Sized (50+) Goods-producing Service Producing
March 2017 Actual 1,176,199   478,968   697,231 211,385 964,814
April (est) 1,173,870   478,121   695,749 209,521 964,349
May (est) 1,170,995   477,036   693,959 207,776 963,219
June(est) 1,167,608   475,681   691,927 206,819 960,789
July(est) 1,172,637   477,722   694,915 207,818 964,819
August (est) 1,173,201   477,957   695,244 207,849 965,352
Sept (est) 1,168,852   476,378   692,474 204,305 964,547
Oct (est) 1,168,796   476,268   692,528 205,555 963,241
Recent Month’s Estimated Change
Sept ’17 to Oct ’17 (57)   (110.91)   54 1,250 (1,306)
Diff from Oct 2016 (5,255)   (1,772)   (3,484) (6,228) 972
Trend
3-month 1,170,283   476,868   693,415 205,903 964,380
6-month 1,170,348   476,840   693,508 206,687 963,661

Retailers’ wish lists feature early holiday shopping

Posted on by katiecmorgan

Most consumers haven’t bought their Thanksgiving turkey yet, but it’s already the holiday shopping season in the minds of many retailers.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp. and others are aggressively advertising holiday specials online and in stores to get a jump on the spending spree that remains a k.

“Black Friday has become black November,” quipped Steve Barr, head of the U.S. retail and consumer sector at PwC, the accounting and advisory firm. That’s because so many retailers are rolling out their holiday price cuts well in advance of Black Friday, once the traditional start of holiday buying.

Although Black Friday remains a big shopping day, its import has been eroded by ever-earlier bargains, the growing clout of online shopping and retailers’ fear that the other guy is getting a jump on them. That competition anxiety was behind the push five years ago to open stores on Thanksgiving Day, and merchants are proving again this year that they can’t open their physical stores early enough to launch the season.

Wal-Mart, Kohl’s Corp., Toys R Us Inc. and several others plan to open on Thanksgiving again this year — some even earlier than in 2016 — a move that in past seasons drew grumbling from some consumers and retail employees unhappy with retail’s “Christmas creep.”

Brick-and-mortar stores are expected to lose more ground this year to the convenience of shopping by phone or computer.

E-commerce has become so pervasive that U.S. online retail sales this holiday season are expected to reach $107.4 billion this year, a 13.8% jump from last year and the first time they’ll top the $100-billion mark, the research firm Adobe Analytics forecasts.

Altogether, U.S. holiday retail sales (those for November and December) should climb between 3.6% and 4% this year, to as much as $682 billion, the National Retail Federation forecasts.

The economy is helping.

“The combination of job creation, improved wages, tame inflation and an increase in net worth all provide the capacity and the confidence [for consumers] to spend,” Jack Kleinhenz, the NRF’s chief economist, said in a statement.

And retailers are trying to cover every shopping preference and garner every possible sales dollar as they launch the holiday spending season, which can account for about 40% of a retailer’s annual revenue.

Indeed, it would be a mistake to confuse the woes of the retailers’ physical stores — which partly reflects that too many locations were built to survive the shift to online — with the notion that Americans no longer care as much to step foot in stores for “doorbusters” and other deeply discounted goods, analysts said.

After all, if online shopping is all the rage, why bother opening stores on Thanksgiving Day?

Because “a website can’t give you goosebumps” like those experienced in touching, buying and taking home the electronics, apparel and other goods bought during the holidays, Barr said.

“Let’s say you and I both want to buy a TV on Thanksgiving Day,” he said. “You go online and it’s going to be delivered in two to three days. I go to the store, get my TV and I’m home in an hour and watching it. It’s an emotional interaction, and that’s what they’re appealing to on Thanksgiving Day.”

The International Council of Shopping Centers, a trade group, said its latest survey indicated that 84% of shoppers on Thanksgiving weekend expect to head to stores. And 85% of the respondents said they expect that when they get there, their purchases will depend on deals or promotions.

That expectation of seeing tantalizing price cuts is partly the fallout from the surge in internet shopping, a segment in which the likes of Amazon.com have put huge downward pressure on prices.

Americans’ online purchases on Cyber Monday alone will climb 16.5% from last year to $6.6 billion, making it the largest online-shopping day in history, Adobe estimates.

The term “Cyber Monday” was coined by staffers at the National Retail Federation in 2005 when they noticed a jump in online sales following the Black Friday weekend.

Many consumers at the time had relatively slow internet connections at home. It became apparent that when they returned to work or school Monday, where they had computers with faster internet speeds, they shopped online.

Retailers seized on the trend and began heavily promoting Cyber Monday as another day for major holiday discounts. And now, of course, fast internet connections are ubiquitous on smartphones, tablets and desktop computers.

This year, Adobe Analytics expects that purchases made on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets will account for 54% of all e-commerce holiday sales — the first time they’ll surpass online sales made on desktop machines.

Target Corp. and Best Buy Co. were among the retailers that released Black Friday promotional prices on hundreds of items last week — sale prices that will return on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday.

Best Buy, for instance, was selling a 43-inch LG television at its “Black Friday price” of $279.99, which it claimed was a $150 savings.

Target and other retailers also heavily promoted “sneak peeks” of their Black Friday advertising fliers on their websites in hopes of luring consumers when Black Friday arrives.

Not every retailer will be open Thanksgiving Day, however.

Chains such as Home Depot Inc, Costco Wholesale Corp., Nordstrom Inc. and Marshalls are among those expected to stay closed Thanksgiving Day, according to BestBlackFriday.com, which tracks the industry.

Outdoor retailer REI Co-op also will close its 151 stores for the third consecutive year on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, a span in which it urges its customers and 12,000 employees to “opt outside.” REI said its website also would not process any online orders those days.

That doesn’t surprise Pam Danziger, who runs the retail consulting firm Unity Marketing. “Many consumers want Thanksgiving to be a pure holiday,” she said.

But Danziger said many chains still opt to open Thanksgiving Day “because they’re desperate to squeeze every last dollar out of their customers,” she said. “They feel like they have to, because the pressure is so high right now to avoid letting their competitors get an inch on them.”

Barr said there’s another reason why retailers open Thanksgiving Day: It’s a way for them to persuade customers to return before Dec. 25.

“If you make that experience as enjoyable as possible in stores on Thanksgiving or Black Friday, they’ll be back later in the holiday season,” he said. “Shoppers never forget how you made them feel.”

James F. Peltz Contact Reporter
L.A. Times

Retail jobs on decline after big weather events

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The retail industry lost 18,000 jobs in October, according to the National Retail Federation, and while it’s hard to pinpoint specific reasons, extreme weather events may have played a part.

The figure does not include auto dealers, restaurants or gas stations, and the economy, overall, has added 261,000 jobs, according to the release which cited Labor Department figures.

“Retail jobs were down in October while overall employment was up, but it is difficult to draw conclusions because the jobs data is still distorted by the aftermath of the recent hurricanes,” NRF Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz said in the release. “The storms have caused some consumers to defer discretionary spending, but at the same time retailers selling building materials saw a significant increase in sales as homeowners and businesses affected by the storms rebuild and make repairs. There continues to be a significant number of job openings in retail, so the drop could reflect a difficulty in hiring given the low unemployment rate. Also keep in mind that retailers are on the verge of adding half a million or more temporary workers for the holiday season.”

Employment at retailers selling building materials and supplies increased by 5,500 jobs in October, noted the release.

 

Retailer Customer Experience

November 7, 2017

Desperate employers search for holiday workers in tight job market

Posted on by katiecmorgan

When UPS lured holiday job seekers recently to its Columbus, Ohio, package sorting center, it turned the dreary process of interviews and background checks into a full-blown party complete with candy and movie-ticket giveaways.

Faced with a shrinking labor pool and a need to fill 95,000 extra jobs this holiday season, the Louisville-based delivery giant has been left scrambling to find innovative ways to tempt potential employees— including turning recruiting sessions into celebrations.

It’s not just UPS. As the holidays draw closer and holiday hiring is in full swing, industries across the board are feeling the unintended side effects of a falling unemployment rate— now at a 17-year low of 4.1%. But retail, food services and delivery, industries that are an essential part of the holiday grind, are among the most vulnerable.

“It’s definitely a workers’ market,” says Peter Harrison, CEO of Snagajob, an online job search engine, who says companies on the platform are increasingly struggling to find workers. “No question about it. Right now, employers are having to do everything they can to lure people in.”

Starting with pay. Hooplas and giveaways aside, companies know nothing can help them sign up workers faster than the prospect of more cold hard cash and benefits:

• Target. The big-box retailer recently announced it’s increasing the hourly minimum wage to $11 an hour, with plans to go as high as $15 an hour by 2020.

• J.C. Penney. The department store chain will start offering paid time off, up to one week a year, to eligible part-time employees in early 2018.

• UPS. The deliverer known for its distinctive brown trucks offers weekly retention bonuses, up to $200 a week, as a reward to employees who work every day.

As for getting out the word, that’s where the parties come in.

“It’s just another way to reach people,” says Dan McMackin, a UPS spokesperson, who says recruiters also went to football games and Green Day concerts. “The competition for workers means we’ve got to be creative. We need to get out there and talk to everyone.”

Areas with unemployment levels below the national average have been hit the hardest.

In Columbus, for instance, where UPS held its recent holiday recruiting party, the unemployment rate was 3.8% in September, compared to the U.S. rate of 4.2% (the national rate dipped to 4.1% in October). The Columbus area was tied for 168th-lowest in unemployment among 388 metro areas.

Last summer, in Fort Collins, Colo., where the unemployment rate was 1.9% in September, second lowest in the nation, Abbie Lowe, was struggling to staff her store, Neighborhood Liquors. She had a sign on the door for more than a month in addition to the ads posted on Craigslist. Lowe got four resumes.

“Typically, we had a bigger pool to select potential employees from,” Lowe says. “But there are jobs everywhere here. Even day laborers are getting jobs all the time. We can’t keep anyone in here.”

In Exeter, N.H., where the unemployment rate hovers around 2.3%, Ryan Abood, CEO of Gourmet Giftbags, an online retailer that makes upscale gift bags, says he focuses on offering “creature comforts” to lure in holiday-season employees.

“It’s all about creating a good vibe at work,” he says. That includes an office with a pool table, air hockey and ping-pong game.

The company, which sells about a million gift baskets a year, usually triples its full-time workforce during the holiday season from 55 people to around 150. Three years ago, Abood says, he received between 50 and 70 applications. This year he had fewer than 10.

“It’s bad when employers are busing workers to work to get enough people to execute the work we do,” he says. “We would never do that if the talent pool wasn’t so bad. Why would we go through all that extra hassle?”

Some companies are turning to social media or temporary staffing companies to fill the gap— but have had little luck.

“You ask for 10 temps and they send you eight,” says Butch Yamali, CEO of The Dover Group, which owns 12 companies, including restaurants, a catering hall and a construction company in the Nassau County, N.Y. area. Dover Group has more than 1,000 employees.

 About six months ago, Yamali began offering bonuses to current employees who recommend new people. In the past he never had to worry about finding workers.

“You’d just ask a staff member if they have a friend or relative to work,” says Yamali, who says the holidays are the busiest time of year. “There was always some way to find staff. Now it’s impossible. It hurts. People are out spending money but we don’t have enough staff to catch them properly.”

Other companies are leveraging new technology to compete for workers. More than 50 franchisees and corporate partners across the U.S., such as various McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts, began using Instant Financial earlier this year. The service allows employees to be paid by the day instead of waiting until the end of the week or month.

This summer’s string of hurricanes in the South left an even bigger dent in the labor pool, especially among construction workers.

“This is not necessarily a bad thing for the people looking for jobs,” says Jack Kleinhenz, chief economist at the National Retail Federation. “They’re going to find them.”

But for employers, many have been forced to lower their hiring standards.

“A growing number of employers used to have elaborate assessments to get hired,” Harrison says. “They’ve had to dramatically shorten them—or eliminate them all together in some cases. If they make it too hard to apply, then people will just not apply.”

, USA TODAY