By Abby Lombardi on October 25, 2012 in Retail.

Last month, we began to look at retail hiring demand as we lead up to the holiday hiring season. At the time, a survey by the Hay Group showed that 36% of responding retailers were planning on hiring more seasonal help than they did last year, up from just 10% of the companies that responded last year. We thought it was a good time to revisit this area and see what jobs were in-demand. However, this time around we were a little surprised by the results.

In September, there were 130,000 available job postings. Despite dropping by about 30,000 ads from August to September, this still represents a 29% year over year increase in hiring demand. We see a large drop in demand from August to September by Office Supply and Stationary Stores, which may be seeing a seasonal affect now that schools have already started and everyone has their supplies for the year. Store Managers are the most commonly advertised job title within the retail sector, followed by Sales Associate, Assistant Manager, and Cashier.

Hiring Demand in the Retail Sector – 4 Year Hiring Trend

Cities that currently the highest volume of job ads are New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, and Boston. Despite the higher demand, job ads in these areas stay online for about 6 weeks. This is in line with national averages, likely because these cities also have some of the largest available candidate pools. This means that, although there are many job ads, there are also enough candidates to fill those jobs. In comparison, retail sales jobs in Bay City, Michigan remain online for the longest time period in the US. Here, the average posting period for a retail sales position averages 7.5 weeks – 1.5 weeks longer than the national average. Other cities with higher than average posting periods include Duluth, Minnesota and Fargo, North Dakota.

Heat Map of Average Posting Periods across the US

Despite a growing volume of job ads across the US, overall recruiting conditions are still likely to be relatively easy. Nationwide, there is a large talent pool.

Cities with the best overall recruiting conditions for retail sales positions are:

• Decatur (Alabama)
• Elkhart-Goshen (Indiana)
• Gainesville (Georgia)

Cities with the most difficult conditions:

• Hinesville-Fort Stewart (Georgia)
• Manchester-Nashua (New Hampshire)
• Springfield (Ohio)

We'll continue to report on the number of job ads in the retail industry throughout the holiday season, so be sure to subscribe to our blog to get the latest data delivered right to your inbox!

Links to this article (3)

• October 26, 2012 - www.scoop.it
  36% of Retailers Planning on Hiring More Seasonal Workers | Work Smarter | Scoop.it
  
• November 17, 2012 - strategic-hr.com
  Hungry for Grocery Store Hiring | Strategic HR
  
• November 17, 2012 - www.wantedanalytics.com
  Hungry for Grocery Store Hiring – Jobs. Trends. Insight.
  

Comments are closed.