Holiday Hiring Slumps to Lowest Since 2009

The scramble for holiday jobs has started earlier than ever, but workers are discovering there are fewer positions to fight over. Despite job seekers launching their seasonal employment searches weeks ahead of schedule, retailers are pulling back dramatically on holiday hiring—setting up what could be the most competitive and disappointing holiday job market since the Great Recession.

Challenger, Gray & Christmas projects that retailers will add fewer than 500,000 seasonal positions during the final three months of 2025, marking an 8% decline from the previous year and the smallest seasonal gain in 16 years. The last time holiday hiring looked this bleak was 2009, when the economy was still reeling from financial collapse and unemployment hit 10%.

The disconnect is striking. Workers are doing everything right—starting their searches early, applying aggressively, remaining flexible about hours and pay. But on the employer side, the enthusiasm has evaporated. Companies that once hired thousands of temporary workers to handle holiday rushes are now betting they can make do with skeleton crews, automation, and their existing permanent staff working overtime.

The Early Bird Gets... Nothing

Indeed's analysis reveals a fundamental mismatch between worker behavior and employer demand. Job seekers are initiating holiday employment searches earlier in 2025 than in previous years, recognizing that competition for seasonal work has intensified. The strategy makes sense: get your application in before the flood of other candidates arrives.

But employers haven't responded by posting positions earlier. Seasonal job listings remain flat compared to 2024, and significantly below the boom years of 2020-2021 when retailers desperately needed bodies to handle surging e-commerce orders and pandemic-related staffing shortages.

"Start now, not when postings peak in mid-November," advises Cory Stahle, economist at Indeed. His guidance reflects the new reality: the window for landing holiday work has compressed. Positions that used to get posted in late October now might not appear until November, and they fill within days rather than weeks. Workers who wait for the traditional mid-November hiring surge may find themselves shut out entirely.

The timing shift creates additional stress for workers who need seasonal income. Many people rely on holiday jobs to cover year-end expenses, pay down credit card debt from earlier in the year, or build a financial cushion for the slow winter months. When those jobs materialize later and disappear faster, families have less time to earn the money they've budgeted for.

Why Retail Is Freezing Out Seasonal Hires

Several factors are driving retailers' reluctance to hire seasonal workers this year:

Automation has accelerated: Self-checkout systems, automated inventory management, AI-powered customer service chatbots, and warehouse robots have reduced the need for human workers. Tasks that required 10 employees five years ago might now need six or seven. Retailers invested heavily in automation during the pandemic, and they're now reaping the labor-saving benefits.

Tariffs have squeezed margins: Trump administration tariffs on imported goods forced retailers to absorb higher costs or pass them to consumers. Either way, profit margins tightened. When companies face margin pressure, one of the first expenses they cut is temporary labor. It's easier to ask existing employees to work extra hours than to hire, train, and manage seasonal workers who'll leave in January.

Inflation changed consumer spending: Despite cooling from 2022-2023 peaks, inflation has permanently reset price levels higher. Consumers have less discretionary income for holiday shopping. When retailers expect weaker sales, they don't staff up aggressively. Why hire seasonal workers for a shopping surge that might not materialize?

Permanent staff can handle the load: During the pandemic, many retailers discovered their core teams could manage holiday volume with overtime rather than seasonal help. The shift to e-commerce also changed staffing needs—fewer floor workers for browsing customers, more warehouse workers for fulfillment. Companies are choosing to pay overtime to reliable permanent employees rather than deal with the uncertainty of temporary hires.

"Seasonal employers are facing a confluence of factors this year: tariffs loom, inflationary pressures linger, and many companies continue to rely on automation and permanent staff instead of large waves of seasonal hires," said Andy Challenger, senior vice president at Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Where the Jobs Actually Are

Not every sector is pulling back on holiday hiring. Tourism and hospitality show stronger demand than retail, offering a potential lifeline for seasonal workers willing to pivot.

Hotels, resorts, theme parks, and travel-related businesses are hiring more aggressively as Americans prioritize experiences over material goods. People might skip buying expensive gifts, but they're still booking holiday trips to visit family or escape winter weather. This shift in consumer spending patterns benefits hospitality while hurting traditional retail.

Andrew Chamberlain from payroll company Gusto noted that "seasonal hiring in sectors like retail is scaling back," but highlighted tourism as a "rare bright spot" in the 2025 holiday employment landscape. Jobs at ski resorts, holiday destinations, event venues, and tourist attractions are seeing healthier posting rates than retail positions.

Food service also continues hiring seasonally, though often at lower wages than retail. Restaurants, catering companies, and food delivery services need extra hands during the holiday party season and increased dining activity. These roles typically offer more flexible scheduling than retail but may provide fewer total hours per week.

Warehouse and logistics workers remain in demand, particularly for e-commerce fulfillment. While Amazon and other major players have pulled back from their pandemic-era hiring frenzies, they still need seasonal help to handle holiday shipping volume. These positions often pay better than retail floor jobs but involve more physically demanding work.

The Competition Is Brutal

The reduced hiring comes as millions of Americans remain unemployed or underemployed. As of September 2025, nearly 2 million people have been searching for work for at least six months according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. When hundreds of thousands of workers compete for fewer than 500,000 seasonal positions, the math gets ugly fast.

Retailers can be extremely selective, choosing candidates with previous seasonal experience, perfect availability, and proven reliability. Workers who would have easily landed holiday jobs in 2021 now face rejection after rejection. The power dynamic has shifted completely back to employers.

This matters especially for workers who depend on seasonal employment to survive financially. College students trying to earn tuition money. Parents covering childcare costs during school breaks. Retirees supplementing fixed incomes. Workers in industries with seasonal downturns (construction, landscaping) who rely on holiday jobs to bridge income gaps.

For these groups, the collapse in holiday hiring isn't just disappointing—it's potentially devastating. When the seasonal safety net disappears, financial stress compounds. People who counted on earning $3,000-5,000 during the holidays to cover year-end expenses now face difficult choices about which bills to pay and which to let slide.

What Job Seekers Can Do

Despite the challenging landscape, workers can improve their odds of landing seasonal work:

Start immediately: Don't wait for November. Applications submitted in October have better chances than those submitted when everyone else floods the system.

Cast a wide net: Don't limit yourself to retail. Look at hospitality, food service, warehouses, delivery services, event staffing, and any sector that experiences holiday volume increases.

Emphasize flexibility: Workers willing to work nights, weekends, and holidays become more attractive. Black Friday, Christmas Eve, and New Year's Eve shifts are hard to fill, so advertising your availability for those dates helps.

Highlight past seasonal experience: If you've worked holiday seasons before, emphasize that prominently. Employers prefer candidates who understand the intensity and can hit the ground running without extensive training.

Consider gig work: When traditional seasonal jobs disappear, gig economy options like Uber, DoorDash, Instacart, and TaskRabbit offer alternatives. The pay and benefits are worse than W-2 employment, but income is income when bills are due.

Network aggressively: Many seasonal positions get filled through referrals before they're ever posted publicly. If you know someone working at a retailer or hotel, ask them to pass your name to hiring managers.

The holiday job market of 2025 looks nothing like the desperate scramble for workers that defined 2020-2021. Companies have learned they can operate leaner, automation has matured, and consumer spending patterns have shifted. Workers hoping for easy seasonal employment will find themselves fighting harder than expected for positions that pay less and offer fewer hours than in previous years.

For the millions of Americans who need that holiday income, the squeeze creates real hardship. The most wonderful time of the year for consumers becomes increasingly stressful for workers just trying to earn enough to make it through winter.

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