SYDNEY, N.S. — The centralization of sales due to Black Friday bargains and last-second Santas have mostly eliminated the need to add seasonal staff for Maritime mobile phone giant The Rolling Phones.
The onset of a pandemic and its impact on revenues has pretty much ended such hiring trends for the Bell Mobility retailer this year.
“I don’t think I’m going to be hiring,” said Ron Campbell, the longtime owner of Bell retail outlets across Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.
“I have enough staff right now so I’m not going to be hiring someone for two months or a month and a half because of the way retail is right now.”
Campbell said a trend away from hiring seasonal staff started to fade several years ago when Black Friday started to become a weeklong event in Canada and people saved their dollars for the associated seven days of activities.
A lull in sales usually follows that November shopping event and lasts until about two weeks before Christmas.
“As far as seasonal workers, by the time we train a seasonal worker for the sake of two weeks it is just not worth it.”
An extra staff member is a commons site at Rudderham’s Source For Sports during the holidays but it’s not a foregone conclusion this year, a year that’s been greatly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I was thinking of that last week,” said store owner Andrew Rudderham, about adding extra staff. “I’m up in the air for now. I think as we increase our hours I might need an extra body, though.”
The state of the marketplace over the next week or so will ultimately lead him to hire or not to hire from a stack of resumes he sees updated most weeks by students looking for a few bucks and others hoping to add some cash to their Christmas funds.
“I usually try to pick up an extra person just to try and cover the Christmas season and they kind of know before stepping in it will be pretty much for a month or month and a half.”
CROSS CANADA
It’s shaping up to be a down year for seasonal hiring right across the country, according to a market survey from job search website Indeed.com, which notes holiday-related job postings lagging behind last year.
The survey, released this month, shows that large retailers have the most seasonal job postings but the overall holiday-related hiring appetite is currently well below 2019 levels when seasonal job postings started to ramp up in early September.
This year, postings only picked up in the second half of that month and, as of Nov. 2, Canadian holiday-related job postings were down 26 per cent compared with 2019, suggesting less demand for seasonal labour.
JOB SEEKERS
The subdued start to holiday hiring is also evident in job seeker interest.
As of early November, roughly 1.4 per 1,000 job searches on Indeed Canada included one holiday-related term — down from 2.2 per 1,000 at the same point last year.
The reason, suggested by the job search site, is that malls and other seasonal venues are not the same draw as in normal years. Holiday jobs that require close contact with the public are not as attractive to seekers as usual.
SUPPORT LOCAL
That job search numbers follow the Retail Council of Canada’s (RCC) annual Holiday Shopping Survey of over 2,500 Canadians.
The latest edition of the survey was conducted in early October and showed Canadians will be spending less in some categories this year. However, shoppers are eager to support local retailers and businesses in all gift purchases.
The RCC survey also indicates the shift to online continues and emphasized the importance for retailers to provide seamless experiences across their selling channels.
Some 58 per cent of consumers surveyed indicated they will shop in store this year, which is a 14 per cent decline versus 2019, and 42 per cent will shop online, an increase of 14 per cent over last year.
Trends are different with Atlantic Canadians where those surveyed indicated they will still browse in-store this year versus several other provinces (54 per cent Atlantic versus 39 per cent nationally). Consumers in Atlantic Canada are also more likely to shop local to avoid shipping delays as compared to several other provinces (59 per cent versus 47 per cent nationally).
STILL HIRING
While the holiday hiring and spending appetites might be behind last year’s numbers, there are still many seasonal positions employers want to fill, especially in the retail sector where sales associates are sought.
According to Indeed.com, nine of the 10 employers with the most holiday job postings in Canada between September and early November were in the retail space.
In Nova Scotia, a job search with ‘seasonal’ in the title brings back 155 potential opportunities, most of which are in the retail sector. Delivery services, likely due to a spike in online orders, are also hiring.
There were 17 such jobs in Prince Edward Island under a similar search, 41 in Newfoundland and Labrador and 109 in New Brunswick.
Greg McNeil is the business reporter at the Cape Breton Post.
