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October 25, 2024 
5 min read
The holidays are just around the corner, and that means employers are already scoping out the situation on seasonal labor. Our October Workforce Report looks at:
Before we unwrap our insights on holiday hiring, let’s take a pulse on the job market. The headlining news? Despite a slight dip in job openings, employers are continuing to open more jobs than last year. In fact, job openings are up 7% from September 2023.
Our observations align with the most recent report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The agency reported higher-than-expected job growth in September, in addition to a decline in unemployment from 4.2% to 4.1%.
Despite these fluctuations, time to fill has held steady year over year. In September, it clocked in at 38 days – down one day from a year earlier.
Now for the scoop on holiday hiring. This year, we looked at two industries typically impacted by holiday shopping to gauge employer and candidate sentiment around seasonal hiring.
We’ll unbox industry-specific insights in the following sections. Before we do, let’s briefly consider the most important person on the holiday hiring scene: the seasonal worker.
Seasonal workers are most interested in the competitive pay their low-commitment, high-intensity job provides. Also of interest? Employee discounts and pleasant work environments.
Seasonal jobs are not all Christmas trees and twinkly lights, however. Fifty-three percent of respondents said they were worried about the inconsistent work hours or scheduling conflicts that may accompany their seasonal job. Others were concerned about inadequate compensation and high stress or heavy workloads.
For insights into the hiring preferences of seasonal workers, check out the iCIMS Insights October Workforce Report.
Retail jobs have garnered serious applicant attention in the last two years. Retail applications are up a whopping 70% since September 2022 and 15% from last year. Job openings and hires in retail are down, however, since last September.
Who are the applicants vying for jobs in retail? A breakdown of September’s retail candidates by age shows Gen Z as the largest pool of applicants. Nearly two-thirds of retail applicants were younger than 35. And only 11% of applicants were over the age of 55.
Dividing seasonal retail applicants by gender, iCIMS research finds that more female respondents are interested in seasonal retail jobs than male respondents.
Despite the influx of applicants, retail recruiters are filling open seats faster. The decrease in time to fill rates could explain why 40% of candidates described their most recent job search as “quick and easy” — two words that delight seasonal workers when it comes to their hiring experience.
Here’s good news for holiday shoppers filling their carts online: Openings for transportation jobs are up from last year. Job openings have soared 15% from last September, meaning packages may arrive even faster this holiday season.
Transportation applications are also up, but only slightly so than last year. Hires, however, are down. They’ve fallen 17% from September 2022, but they are consistent with last year’s hiring numbers.
How do transport applicants compare to those in the realm of retail? Like retail applicants, the vast majority of transport applicants are younger than 35. Transportation applicants have a stronger male representation than retail applicants. More male respondents were interested in seasonal delivery work than female respondents.
Like their retail counterparts, transportation hiring teams have shrunk their time to fill rates, even as they’ve seen job openings and applications grow. In fact, transport recruiters have shaved four days off their average time to fill rates since September 2022.
Download the full October Workforce Report.
Rhea Moss is director of customer experience and data insights at iCIMS. She oversees the iCIMS Insights program, which aggregates and anonymizes the billions of data points iCIMS’ software processes per year and transforms them into actionable insights to help drive business and hiring strategies. Previously, Rhea was head of products at prescriptive data, and served as product and program managers at MongoDB and Thomson Reuters.
