Continued: Help on aisle 9? Be ready to wait

Shoppers might find fewer of Santa's little helpers when they hit the stores today, thanks to a deliberate decision by retailers to hire fewer people as they head into the busiest time of the year.

In Minnesota, retailers added only 107 jobs last month, the smallest October hiring since the state began keeping records on that sector in 1990. National surveys say the hiring outlook for retail jobs hasn't been this bad since 1991.

Walk the malls, and it's hard to find a "now hiring" sign. Parents complain that their high school and college-age kids can't find jobs over the school break. Circuit City, Cabela's, eBay and the Gap have recently announced companywide layoffs.

Even stores that might hire for the holidays, such as Ann Taylor and Talbots, plan to close stores, meaning the prospects of turning a seasonal job into a permanent one may be slim.

Hiring fewer people is an easy option for retailers when the economy is slowing and consumer spending is weak. But it also carries some risk.

Long checkout lines or not enough salespeople working the floor could send frustrated customers out the door, empty-handed.

"There's so much uncertainty associated with this holiday season that many stores are in wait-and-see mode," said Bruce Anderson, president of the Minnesota Retailers Association. "Stores are trying to figure out ways to cut back, yet you want customers to have a good shopping experience. You don't want them waiting in a long line to spend their money."

Fewer job prospects

Best Buy Co. Inc. said it expects to hire about 24,000 seasonal workers this year, down from about 26,500 last year. That's still about 15 percent more than normal staffing levels, but the company said it has been slowly reducing its reliance on seasonal help for years. Instead, it has worked to reduce its turnover rate and hang on to employees who understand the complex world of consumer electronics.

Target Corp. declined to offer specific numbers, but spokeswoman Laura Opsahl said seasonal hiring likely "would come in less" this year because of slowing sales. Last year, Target hired 100,000 additional people, or about 65 per store.

Traditionally, 50 to 60 percent of workers placed with a company during the holiday hiring season end up getting hired full time, according to JobSource USA. That includes retail as well as manufacturing and service jobs, such as tax preparation. But with the economy expected to continue its recessionary slog deep into next year, those sunny stats likely won't hold up.

Full-time hours fall

A survey of 1,000 hiring mangers released in October from SnagAJob.com found 57 percent don't plan on making any holiday hires this year vs. 49 percent a year ago. Overall, the managers said they expected their hiring levels to be down about a third from last year.

Retail workers are paid an average of about $10 an hour, but even those who have hung on to their jobs are seeing their paychecks shrink. About 209,000 retail workers saw their full-time hours cut to part-time last month, according to the Labor Department.

At Starbucks, which will close 600 stores this year, the opposite is true. The company is hiring fewer people and allowing part-time employees to work longer hours. The push for more staffing flexibility came from employees, said spokeswoman Tara Darrow, and the company hopes it could reduce expensive turnover costs down the road, she said.

But Erik Forman, a Twin Cities Starbucks barista who is making a push to unionize its workers, said picking up additional hours requires workers to be "on call 80 hours out of a workweek," the kind of flexibility a parent with young children or a student doesn't have.

"They're trying to spin it as pro-customer and pro-worker," he said. "They're still not guaranteeing you a single hour. There's no real change except that they're asking you to be free to work more time."

Mark Bussard, Gander Mountain's senior vice president of retail sales, said the St. Paul-based outdoor retailer will be "looking at every nook and cranny to see what we can do less of." Much of Gander's merchandise requires a highly trained workforce, he said. Fishing and hunting gear has gone high-tech along with optics and electronics, and selling firearms and archery takes a different skill-set than selling shoes.

Being careful not to "overlabor" in this sales environment is key, he said, but having the right number of people on the floor is even more so.

"There's a real fine line between getting your operating costs down low enough to get through the tough times and not losing the opportunities that will present themselves to you," Bussard said.

Jackie Crosby • 612-673-7335