Dick's Sporting Goods assistant manager Bernie O'Shei places a sign outside his store at the Boulevard Mall encouraging people to look into job opportunities on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2020.
Holiday hiring is well underway at stores in the Buffalo Niagara market and, this year, seasonal workers may be just as likely to pack orders for FedEx as they are to stand behind a cash register.
Covid-conscious consumers are turning to online shopping in droves and retailers need help getting what is expected to be a record number of purchases into customers' hands in time for Christmas.
Wary of exposure to the disease, consumers have already significantly shifted their shopping behavior from in-store to online over the past seven months. And rather than walk the aisles in search of gifts and decorations this holiday season, shoppers overwhelmingly say they will rely instead on curbside pickup, in-store pickup and home delivery.
So in addition to the usual cashiers and overnight shelf stockers, there is a bigger call this year for fulfilment workers, warehouse workers and other behind-the-scenes roles.
Some of those positions, such as warehouse roles where a worker might be expected to drive a forklift, come with a bigger paycheck. That's because retailers are competing with other industries for the same workers, workers who tend to be higher skilled and higher paid.
Coronavirus is prompting stores to create new positions as well. Some workers will perform extra sanitization while others will count customers to keep occupancy within legal levels or direct foot traffic.
Also this year, stores are recruiting just as heavily for permanent positions as they are for seasonal ones. Traditional retail workers, especially older ones, are hesitant to stay in jobs that expose them to the risk of Covid during thousands of customer interactions per day.
As a result, many stores are having trouble keeping their ranks full and are looking to hang onto workers beyond the busier holiday season. But as the Covid pandemic drags on, consumers are expected to continue favoring online shopping in the long term or even permanently. That means those new behind-the-scenes retail roles are here to stay.
Fear of the coronavirus and lack of child care options have contributed to a 38% drop in the number of people looking for holiday jobs this year, according to job outplacement company Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Retail employers are responding by hyping company jobs that do not involve face time with customers and offering work-from-home roles where possible, such as in customer service and online ordering.
Even with higher unemployment rates than last year, big-box stores have increased pay to find workers.
Big-box stores Walmart, Target and Best Buy have all increased their minimum wages to $15 and Hobby Lobby increased its full-time wage to $17 an hour.
New hire Chyna Bailey of Buffalo, right, and Auntie Anne's manager Stacy Begraffenried, discuss orientation procedures on her first day on the job on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2020.
The unemployment rate in Buffalo Niagara was 6.9% in September, up from 3.9% during the same month last year. It's down from 10.7% in August, not because the local economy added more jobs but because more than 28,000 people dropped out of the job market, according the state Department of Labor.
Employment website WNYjobs.com has seen a greater demand for warehouse, order fulfillment and other ecommerce related workers for the temporary holiday season this year.
"I assume many businesses are gearing up for the added volume anticipated by more online sales this holiday season," said Joe Rindfuss, the site's general manager.
In-store jobs usually call for someone to handle curbside pickup, ship-from-store, and buy-online pick-up-in-store, or BOPIS, orders. Duties may include picking and packing orders, shipping packages, auditing package shipments against inventory rolls, staging orders for pickup and returning products to store shelves when orders are not picked up.
Dick's Sporting Goods customer service lead Rachel Radack delivers a curbside pickup order for Donna Mueller as she waits safely in her car outside at the Boulevard Mall on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2020.
Dick's Sporting Goods is looking for a "holiday omni-channel associate" at its Clarence store. Macy's at both Walden Galleria and Boulevard Mall is offering a variety of seasonal fulfillment jobs, with an emphasis on in-store tools and technology, such as handheld devices and shipping software. And Omaha Steaks in Amherst needs someone to pull grocery orders for curbside customers.
Target will hire 130,000 seasonal workers this year. While that's about the same as last year, workers will be assigned to differing roles. More than twice as many people will be devoted to curbside pickup compared with last year, and more employees will be assigned to safety, cleaning and fulfillment roles.
Amazon recently sent postcards out to Western New York homes advertising permanent local jobs paying $15 or more per hour. The company is looking to fill 100,000 seasonal positions this holiday season, including 4,500 across New York State.
That number is down from last year's 200,000 seasonal hires, but only because Amazon has beefed up its permanent staffing to deal with what seem to be permanent increases in purchasing volume on the company's website. Swamped with online orders at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, Amazon mounted a hiring blitz in March and April.
UPS aims to add 100,000 temporary workers to handle what it expects will be the company's highest peak volume ever. Last year, it kept more than a third of its seasonal workers on permanently, it said. FedEx will add 70,000 seasonal workers to handle higher volumes, with some workers promoted to permanent positions.
Though seasonal hiring winds up in October, it's expected to continue through mid-December this year.
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October 30, 2020 at 05:02PM
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How Covid has changed holiday hiring and seasonal jobs this year - Buffalo News
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