Dive Brief:
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The low unemployment rate could mean that retailers could find it difficult to find temporary holiday workers, according to labor experts interviewed by CNBC.
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That means that understaffed warehouses and delivery services could delay package deliveries, and stores could be understaffed. Several employment companies that help retailers find holiday staffing are already reporting such difficulties.
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The pay and working conditions at warehouses could be especially tough to fill as workers find better, more flexible work elsewhere.
Dive Insight:
Retailers have been hoping for an improving economy so that consumers can relax and spend. But of course, the same workers that have fatter wallets are also more free to say “no” to lower-paying, high stress jobs. On Friday, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported an unemployment rate of 5.1%, the lowest in seven years.
Not that the picture is all rosy for workers - pay growth is still somewhat lukewarm, and that will continue to vex retailers. But also vexing will be the difficulties retailers will have — and are already beginning to see — in finding workers willing to accept the pay and working conditions they offer in warehouses, for example.
By some reports, some of those situations are pretty brutal, and so it should perhaps come as no surprise that they’d go unfilled when there are finally better jobs to be had.
But certainly any situation that will prompt retailers to improve the jobs they offer will be an added cost that could drive up consumer prices — and ding profits.
Still, all that may be preferable than suffering another “retail funk,” which the industry seems to finally be shaking off.