Retailers get creative in bid to find enough holiday workers

ATLANTA -- It's beginning to look a lot like desperation.

An employment bulletin board in Lenox Square Mall, one of Atlanta's largest shopping venues, is already jammed with more than 100 job openings, about two months earlier than holiday employment notices typically appear.

As the nation's unemployment rate hovers above a 30-year low, retailers are anxious about the prospects of not having enough staff during the industry's busiest season. The stakes are high: Department stores ring up a quarter of annual sales and as much as a half of their profit during November and December, and they fear a lack of sales clerks could drive shoppers away. "Customers are going to get more frustrated than they already are," said Steven Wood, chief economist at BancAmerica Securities in San Francisco. "They'll turn to the shopping channel, go online or do their shopping by catalog." Retailers from Federated Department Stores to jeweler Freidman's are bulking up their staff to meet the crush of end-of-the-year holiday shopping. In all, more than 950,000 workers were hired to work in retail stores in the final two months of last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A key concern among brick-and-mortar retailers is that frustrated shoppers have an increasing number of avenues when shopping for holiday gifts. Internet sales, for example, may pale in comparison to the $1.7 trillion Americans spend at retailers, not including autos. But online sales are exploding at a rapid pace, and traditional retailers are taking notice and moving to improve service. Sales over the Internet are forecast to double to $4.8 billion this year and then surge to $17.4 billion by 2002, according to Forrester Research, a Cambridge, Mass., consulting firm. Macy's, a unit of Cincinnati-based Federated, is feeling a sense of urgency in finding 11,000 holiday-season workers. "This year is different," said Bradley Belz, senior vice president of human relations at Macy's East. "We're approaching our holiday hiring earlier because it's the competitive thing to do." To lure qualified candidates, Macy's is offering signing bonuses - - as much as $300 -- to new hires as well as rewards to existing staffers for referrals. In Macy's most competitive and tight job markets -- New York and Boston -- employees will see bigger bonuses, Belz said. In New York, the city's jobless rate in August fell to 7.5 percent from last year's 9.4 percent. Sears Roebuck, which is looking to add about 50,000 holiday hires to its base of 250,000 workers, has teamed with the city of Detroit to provide customized bus routes for employees from the inner city to Sears' suburban stores. Sears also offers tuition reimbursement for students, who make up a good portion of its holiday hires. "There are an endless number of stories of students who stay on with us and make successful careers," spokeswoman Paula Davis said. Therein lies one of the most attractive benefits to holiday helpers, and the reason companies prefer qualified workers: the possibility of year-round employment. "The best of the best of those people may be offered employment past December," said Stephanie Brown, a spokeswoman for J.C. Penney. Perquisites for holiday hires this year at Limited include one week of discounts at any of the company's chains such as Express, Structure or Lane Bryant. For the first time, Limited is planning a centralized search for holiday help, a spokeswoman said, in part because of the tight labor market. The company is set to announce plans for three job fairs in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, in which 55,000 interviews will be held for 11,000 positions. Those jobs were filled by individual stores last year. The outlook for holiday retail sales has dimmed recently -- and may trim some demand for holiday workers. Falling currencies in Asia have made imported goods more competitive, forcing retailers to cut prices. August's stock market drop has raised questions about how much disposable income consumers will have to spend on gifts. The Conference Board's consumer confidence index for September was the weakest since October 1997, suggesting spending will slow. And job growth in September was the weakest since January 1996. "Earnings expectations are being revised downward even as we speak," said Christopher Low, chief economist at First Tennessee Capital Markets in New York. Still, retailers are going to play it safe, said economist Greg Jones at Briefing.com in Jackson Hole, Wyo. "There's always those stores that say `we can get by with one less worker,'" Jones said. "But it's more than likely that they're going to pay up for holiday workers."

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