Companies increasing their holiday hiring

Associated Press

NEW YORK

UPS will hire up to 95,000. Kohl’s plans to take on 67,000 and FedEx 50,000. Wal-Mart will add 60,000.

One after the other, a flurry of major U.S. retail and transportation companies announced sharp increases this week in the number of temporary workers they plan to hire for the holiday season. Collectively, such hiring could reach its highest point this year for stores since 1999, when the economy was roaring and the Great Recession was still eight years away.

Credit the combination of a strengthening economy and optimism about consumer spending. Stores have determined that they’ll need more temporary help for the holiday season, which accounts for 20 percent of the retail industry’s annual sales.

Their stepped-up hiring plans reflect another reality, too: More retailers have come to recognize the need to improve their customer service in the age of online king Amazon. Many shoppers now jump back and forth between their mobile devices and physical stores and expect the same easy shopping experience at both.

Challenger Gray & Christmas Inc., a global outplacement consultancy, predicts retailers will add more than 800,000 seasonal workers for the October-through-December period. Such hiring last topped that figure in 1999, when stores added 849,500 temporary workers. It credits brightening confidence among consumers.

“The last two years saw holiday hiring return to pre-recession levels,” said John Challenger, CEO of the Chicago-based outplacement firm. “This year, we could see hiring return to levels not seen since the height of the dot.com boom. ... There are more people who are surer about their spending.”

The outlook for job and income growth have both improved, says Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group.

The unemployment rate has tumbled to 6.1 percent. A year ago, it was 7.2 percent. Three years ago, it was 9 percent.

So far this year, employers have added a solid average of 215,000 jobs a month, up from a monthly average of 194,000 in 2013 and 186,000 in 2012.