In advance of the holiday season, the National Retail Federation (NRF) reported retailers will hire between 500,000 and 665,000 seasonal workers in November and December.

At least some of retail’s 8.5 percent to 10.5 percent projected growth for holiday sales is contingent on retailers having enough employees to ring up the sales, stock the shelves and pull-and-pack the online orders.

Then the November 2021 Bureau of Labor Statistics reported jobs numbers dropped. Retail employment declined by 20,000 jobs in October from 15.45 million to 15.43 million in November.

Overall, retail employment stands 176,000 lower in November 2021 than pre-pandemic February 2020.

Throughout 2021, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) found some four percent of the retail workforce quit their jobs each month. And about half of them have no intention of returning to the industry. Today the quit rates in retail are up more than 25 percent compared to before the pandemic.

“The war for hourly talent is on and retail is losing,” says Nate Shenck, BCG’s head of retail in North America. “What’s different this year is there’s much more movement across different sectors – retail, travel, distribution, leisure, restaurants and the gig economy – than there has been in the past. It signals there’s an overall discontent among folks that left the hourly workforce.”

Shenck sees it as a far bigger issue for retail than just this holiday season, though it is bad enough with all the other headwinds retailers face to meet rising consumer demand.

“The U.S. economy is currently operating above pre-Covid levels, but there’s still five million fewer hourly workers creating bottlenecks in the system that will take time to clear,” he continues.

In any case, retailers are left shorthanded not just in not being able to fill their higher job attrition rates, but the workers they have too frequently call-out from their scheduled work times, creating even more challenges day-to-day.

“If you’re the customer, it clearly impacts customer service, both directly and indirectly,” Shenck says. “It translates into fewer open hours and retailers forced to shut specific locations with isolated pockets of staffing challenges. These employment challenges work all the way upstream into the supply chain.”

Effectively, retail workers are saying, in the inimitable words of Johnny Paycheck, “Take this job and shove it.”

If you operate an independent retail store that has survived the 2020 Pandemic, you could be in the sweet spot of the consumer retail economy as the economy recovers. That’s because small will the next BIG story at retail – small as in local independent retailers. Consumers today crave personal connection and that is just what Main Street retailers give them.

Learn how to tap this emerging retailing trend. It is fueled by the highest-potential and highest-spending customers’ desire for a new shopping experience that they can’t find online, at the mall, in the national chains or in big box stores. This trend will reshape the retail landscape over the next decade. 

In the evolving future, success at retail is less about WHAT you sell, and more about HOW you sell it!

Discover seven simple steps to transform your store from ordinary to extraordinary and learn from 17 of the nation’s best specialty retailers about what makes their shops POP!

Shops that POP! 7 Steps to Extraordinary Retail Success by Pamela Danziger and Jennifer Patterson Lorenzetti will show you how to craft a retail shopping experience that’s irresistible to the most profitable shoppers looking for something special.

Everyone has heard the adage, “The bigger the challenges, the greater the opportunity,” but often the reverse is true too: The bigger the opportunity, the greater the challenges. Both apply for home brands that aim to grow in the U.S. consumer market.“

Here are the five biggest challenges that every home furnishings brand faces entering or expanding in the U.S. market, whether selling through brick-and-mortar retail, B2C e-commerce or through the design trade.

While most businesses are entranced by the growth opportunities in China – 1.4 billion people with GDP growth averaging ~9% per year since 1980 – the U.S. market is far larger in market size yet with only one-fourth the total number of consumers – 328 million people living in 138 million U.S. households. The U.S. economy leads the world, $21.4 trillion as compared with $14.3 trillion in China, according to The World Bank.

In reality, China may be the world’s biggest producer, but the U.S. is the biggest consumer market.

Further, the U.S. is where more of the world’s wealth resides. There are 20.6 million U.S. millionaires, more than the five next largest countries combined, including China’s 2.3 million millionaires.

As for the home furnishings market, Americans spent $380.7 billion in 2020 on goods for their home, including $238.8 billion on furniture and furnishings alone. Add to that the $90.4 billion spent on home services, and the total market opportunity in the U.S. is rapidly approaching a half-trillion dollars.