Lots of competition for holiday jobs

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Black Friday shoppers arrive at Macy's as the doors open at the Spring Hill Mall in West Dundee in 2008. Macy's opened just a little before 5 a.m., while many of the anchor stores opened for business at 4 a.m. | Sun-Times Media file photo

Some sites to search for holiday jobs

United Parcel Service: www.upsjobs.com

Toys “R” Us: www.Ruscareers.com

Kohl’s: www.kohlscareers.com

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Updated: April 19, 2011 5:21AM

It has been hard to find economic cheer anywhere this year. But many of the 15 million people who have been trying to find full-time jobs have a decent chance of landing temporary work as Christmas-season store clerks, delivery people and merchandise handlers from now through the end of December.

The retailing industry nationwide has shed about a million workers — about one job in seven — since the recession began. But stores, package services and online dealers are expected to hire more people for Christmas-season work than they did a year ago.

The appropriately named Chicago-based employment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas estimates that retailers nationwide will add 600,000 temporary workers, up 20 percent from last year’s 501,400. And a survey by SnagAJob.com, a website advertising hourly jobs, estimates employers will hire 26 percent more temporary people than last Christmas.

Local retailers hold their local hiring figures close to the vest and mostly forbid interviews with either seasonal workers or local store managers. Sears Holdings Inc., whose Sears and Kmart stores are run from a headquarters in Hoffman Estates, refuses to divulge any figures about its holiday hiring.

But the Toys “R” Us chain has been adding people at its permanent stores around the area, and a few weeks ago it opened a for-the-holidays-only Toys “R” Us Express store in a vacant space at Spring Hill Mall in West Dundee — just a few hundred feet from where a permanent Toys “R” Us store closed a few years ago in the mall’s fringes.

Toys “R” Us spokeswoman Linda DeNotaris said with so much of the toy business happening at Christmas time, the company experimented with the temporary, 4,000-square-foot “pop-up” Express stores last holiday season in 90 locations.

Customers responded so well to those added locations that this year, the chain is opening 600 Express stores — more than six times as many as last year and about equal to the number of regular Toys “R” Us stores in operation. And these pop-up stores will require 10,000 new seasonal workers to staff them, DeNotaris said.

On top of that, DeNotaris said, the 600 regular Toys “R” Us stores will hire 35,000 seasonal workers, in effect doubling the company’s work force.

“Interviewing for holiday positions at permanent Toys ‘R’ Us stores begins at the end of September, and new hires start working in early October,” she said. “But hiring continues to build throughout the holiday season right up until Christmas.”

More applicants

Kohl’s also expects to add more than 40,000 temp workers, according to spokeswoman Sydney Hofer. She declined to give specific numbers for local stores, but said that with business expected to be up, Kohl’s stores will average 35 temp workers each this year compared with 30 last Christmas. And hiring at Kohl’s distribution centers will be up a whopping 50 percent, from 1,500 to 2,200.

But with so many people unemployed, “We’re seeing an applicant pool that’s greater in numbers and more qualified than we’ve seen in the past,” DeNotaris of Toys “R” Us said.

Besides younger people, those looking for a second income and laid-off older people, she added, the toy chain has found that “retirees are historically very good workers, who as parents or grandparents really relate to our family-oriented customers.”

At Tivoli Classic Cinemas, division manager Sherrie Janovsky agreed that many laid-off older people have been applying for movie theater jobs year-round, and “we’ve had several older applicants become excellent employees.”

However, don’t expect many seasonal openings at the theaters, Janovsky warned. With bigger audiences pouring in to see the holiday blockbusters, the chain does need more people. But past employees coming home from college for Christmas vacation fill most of the gaps.

One reason there are so many seasonal jobs may be that retailers have shed so many full-time, permanent jobs since the recession began.

Some of those old jobs also have been replaced by changing technology, as over-the-counter sales at local malls and downtowns increasingly are replaced by orders placed via the Internet or telephone. The online retailers in turn employ people — Amazon.com expects to add 15,000 holiday workers, for example.

But Illinois may be a net loser, as Amazon adds people around its base in Washington state while traditional “brick and mortar” chains such as Sears reduce permanent jobs at their stores in Illinois.

Delivering jobs

On the other hand, goods sold online have to get to the buyer somehow, and that may be one reason United Parcel Service is adding a whopping 50,000 seasonal workers nationwide, including 2,000 to 3,000 in the Chicago area.

UPS spokesman Jayson Thomas said as the company’s residential routes get more packages to deliver, many add “driver’s helpers” in December. The driver parks his or her truck on a block and makes deliveries up and down one side of the street while the temporary helper delivers on the other side of the street. UPS also is still hiring package handlers, who tote and sort boxes in the company’s bases in Palatine, DeKalb and Rockford.

Despite the UPS jobs’ relatively lower pay ($8.50 to $9.50 an hour, with no benefits) and their sometimes demanding physicality, applications rose 40 percent last Christmas season, apparently because so many people had been laid off from other jobs or found other businesses not hiring, Thomas said.

“There is absolutely still time to apply for these positions,” Thomas said.

One of those businesses not hiring this year will be the U.S. Postal Service, according to regional spokesman Sean Hargadon. Sure, people still send Christmas cards, and many send gifts via mail. But Hargadon said the increasing automation of post office sorting, plus the decline of routine business mail and letters, mean that local post offices and regional sorting centers “will be able to handle the extra load just fine” with the current work force.

Total Postal Service business dropped from 177 billion pieces of mail in 2008-09 to 170 billion in the year that ended in September.

New career path

Of course, even a temporary, minimum-wage holiday job could turn into a year-round part-time job or even a permanent new career for some laid-off older person or recent graduate if they work hard and impress the bosses.

“Many of our managers and associates have been holiday hires at one time in their lives,” Sears/Kmart spokeswoman Kim Freely said.

“Working during the holiday season provides an opportunity for them to see what retail is all about — and many find out they love it,” said DeNotaris at Toys “R” Us.

“Many remain with us after the holiday season has come and gone. Some have even gone on to full-time management positions.”