Seasonal retail hiring may plummet to the lowest level since 2009. Job placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas expects retailers to add under 500,000 temporary positions in the final three months of the year, an 8% annual decline, and the smallest gain in 16 years. Retail depends on holiday Q4 sales for a bulk of annual revenue and the hiring trend is a glaring sign of a declining economy.
Certain retailers, like Target, stated that they plan to offer overtime hours to existing employees. Yet another sign of the times as people are eager for additional income and companies are not keen to take on additional employees.
A PwC survey from September 2025 indicates that the average person plans to spend 5% less this holiday season, down from $1,638 in 2024 to $1,552 per person. The survey has not indicated a drop in holiday sales since 2020. PwC’s figure translates to ~$413B–$460B total if scaled to ~266M adult consumers. Gen Z notably plans to spend 23% less this year as the cost of living has caused most young adults to live paycheck to paycheck, whereas boomers with sufficient savings plan to spend 5% more.
The National Retail Federation (NRF), however, predicts US retail sales will rise between 2.7% and 3.7% over 2024, reaching between $5.42 trillion and $5.48 trillion for the year. As for holiday spending, the NRF predicts a rise between 2.5% and 3.5% reaching a total between $979.5 billion and $989 billion.
Hiring trends in retail indicate that companies are less than optimistic about overall foot traffic this holiday season. Americans are spending more on less. Discretionary spending has been on the decline as inflation never meaningly waned.