The holiday rush is in full swing as retailers dress their stores with decorations and unveil the latest toys and games to entice seasonal shoppers. However, there’s a noticeable disparity in the demand for workers between the two sides of the Atlantic, and it’s not necessarily where you’d expect.
The U.K. appears to be in a seasonal hiring frenzy. Some of the country’s biggest retailers have ramped up recruitment ahead of Christmas. Sainsbury’s, Tesco, and John Lewis are hiring more than 60,000 people combined this holiday season, the retailers said in separate press releases.
Workers also seem hungrier than ever for short-term work to get them through the holidays. According to data from the hiring platform Indeed, searches for holiday jobs are up more than 30% from last year, when a cost-of-living crisis had begun to sweep across the U.K.
In the U.S., meanwhile, the picture around holiday jobs looks more subdued, particularly through the lens of the country’s biggest revenue maker, Walmart.
Maren Dollwet Waggoner, Walmart’s senior vice president of people, indicated in a LinkedIn post that the company wouldn’t be engaging in a rush of seasonal hiring this year.
“I’m also excited that we’re staffed and ready to serve customers this holiday season. We’ve been hiring throughout the year to be sure we’re ready to serve customers however they want to shop,” said Waggoner.
Last year, Walmart hired 40,000 seasonal workers to get it through the busy Christmas period even as inflation stood at nearly 6.5%, more than twice the rate it is now.
Walmart’s latest move may indicate a quieting in the U.S. jobs market. According to data from Indeed, seasonal job postings from employers in the U.S. are down 6% on 2022.
Jobs citing an “urgent” need to be filled have declined by a third.
A report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, first shared with Reuters, cast a similarly ominous light on hiring in the States, suggesting recruitment would drop to levels last seen during the financial crisis of 2008.
Jack Kennedy, a senior economist at Indeed, told Fortune that big U.S. retailers appear content to ride out the impending holiday period at their current staffing levels, hesitant to put more costs into a potentially suppressed spending environment.
U.S holiday spending on track
However, it’s highly unlikely that the U.K. leading the U.S. in short-term hiring reflects the strength of their respective economies. In fact, it’s probably the opposite.
Jack Kleinhenz, the chief economist of the National Retail Federation (NRF), suspects holiday hiring may be subdued in the U.S. because, as Walmart’s Waggoner said in her post, the positions have already been filled on a full-time basis, offering workers a more secure form of employment.
That might be seen in a renewed vigor among U.S. shoppers.
The country has been emboldened by falling inflation and better-than-expected Q3 GDP data, which grew at an annualized 4.9%. With rising disposable household income contributing to that rise, fears of a recession have broadly been put to bed.
Over Christmas, the NRF expects record spending from consumers, growing as much as 4% to $966.6 billion. Research from AdobeDigital Insights has U.S. holiday spending increasing 4.8% this year.
“We know that wages and salaries have been up. We’ve also seen over the last few years that homes are worth more, so they have equity that they can think about. So it’s a number of factors that are fitting together as puzzle pieces for this holiday season,” the NRF’s Kleinhenz told Fortune.
While there is still some sluggishness among U.S. consumers, they appear to be holding up better than in the U.K.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t expect much of a labor market slowdown in the new year. The group forecasts the U.S. labor market to add nearly 5 million jobs in 2024.
Bleak Christmas, bleaker 2024 for the U.K.
By comparison, the U.K. looks to be entering a particularly bleak winter.
Inflation in the country has been stubborn at best. Consumer prices rose at an annual rate of 6.7% last September, with food and alcohol elevated at more than 12% growth.
Unexpectedly low CPI of 4.6% in October, however, offered a ray of light. Higher interest rates — resting at 5.25% — have also put the squeeze on spending from another angle.
Meanwhile, the U.K. economy is stagnating, with the latest data showing no GDP growth in the three months to September.
Indeed’s Kennedy says job applications in the U.K. are likely driven by the need among Brits to make ends meet, rather than a sign of a hot economy. That’s no surprise when observing the country’s own spending outlook.
Several surveys now paint the typical British shopper as anxious, thrifty, and prepared to find bargains while spending less altogether.
A forecast from PwC predicted that a third of U.K. shoppers would cut their spending this holiday season. Accenture doubled down on that gloom, forecasting two-thirds of Brits to cut back on spending, Reuters reported.
Inevitably, the search for bargains is coming back into focus.
“What seems to be happening is that consumers are acknowledging that they’re going to be spending for this holiday season, and so they’re being a little bit more controlled in levels of preseason spending,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights.
Pandya says retailers will need to be forthcoming with discounts to appeal to shoppers.
The conditions set the U.K. economy up not just for a bleak Christmas but also an unhappy New Year.
The dial on economic growth is unlikely to move much in the next couple of years. KPMG forecasts 0.3% GDP growth in 2024, a view also held by the British Chamber of Commerce.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies also anticipates a steep rise in unemployment to as high as 6% next year.
Rather than a sign of resurgence, a spate of holiday hiring might just be another reminder of a widening economic gap across the Atlantic.
