Team Management News: This Year's Holiday Hiring Season Looks Smaller Again

Big-box retailers are quietly signaling that this year's holiday hiring season will be smaller than last year's, which was already the weakest since 2008. For an independent restaurant, retail store, or service business trying to staff up for the fourth quarter, that shift changes where the available workers are coming from and how fast they need to be locked down. Here is what the new forecast says and what it means for a manager building a Q4 schedule right now.

The Forecast, and Why It Matters to Small Operators

Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas is projecting that retailers will add roughly 450,000 seasonal jobs in the fourth quarter of 2026. That would come in below the 461,500 seasonal jobs added in the same quarter last year, which was itself the smallest holiday hiring bump since 2008 and 15% below the 543,100 seasonal jobs added in Q4 2024. In other words, this is not a one-year dip. It is the second straight year of a shrinking seasonal hiring season, and the trend line points down rather than toward a rebound. For a small business competing for the same pool of seasonal workers as the national chains, a smaller overall hiring season changes the math on when to post openings and how much competition to expect.

Where the Cuts Are Actually Landing

The forecast is not an even cut across every kind of seasonal job. Warehouse, fulfillment, and parcel-handling roles are expected to stay flat or even grow compared to last year, while store-based hiring, the cashiers, stockers, and sales floor staff that a retail or restaurant manager would recognize as direct competition for their own hiring, is carrying the entire decline. Several major retailers have also stopped publicly disclosing their seasonal headcount targets at all, a shift that started in 2024 and reflects a broader move toward flexible, on-demand staffing rather than committing to a fixed number of seasonal hires months in advance. Amazon, which has hired around 250,000 seasonal workers in each of the last three years, typically does not announce its numbers until mid-October. Bath & Body Works, which has committed to more than 30,000 seasonal associates each of the last three seasons, tends to announce in early September. The pattern across both is the same: big retailers are managing seasonal staffing as a flexible lever they pull late and adjust often, not a fixed plan set in stone by Labor Day.

A Frontline Labor Pool That Is Still Restless

The smaller hiring season does not mean frontline workers are suddenly easy to hold onto once hired. Quits in accommodation and food services ran at 5.7% in May 2026, nearly three times the 1.9% quits rate for the economy as a whole. That gap says the people working retail and restaurant jobs right now are still leaving those jobs at a much higher rate than the typical worker, seasonal hiring slowdown or not. A smaller pool of new seasonal applicants combined with a workforce that is already prone to walking means the seasonal staff a manager does bring on this year need a faster, more reliable path to being useful, because there may not be as large a bench of replacements waiting behind them if a few do not work out.

What Retail and Restaurant Managers Should Do Now

• Post seasonal openings earlier than the big chains do. With Amazon holding its announcement until mid-October and other large retailers following a similarly late pattern, an independent operator that posts seasonal roles in September gets in front of candidates before the national chains flood the market with competing offers.
• Sell flexibility as a selling point, not an afterthought. Big retailers are already moving toward flexible, on-demand staffing because that is what candidates are responding to. A smaller operator that can offer real say over shift length or days worked has a genuine edge in a market where the biggest employers are chasing the same thing.
• Build a fast, repeatable onboarding checklist before the season starts. Seasonal hires do not have months to ramp up, so the training and task steps for a new hire's first week need to be written down and consistent across every shift lead, not dependent on whoever happens to be training that day.
• Budget for mid-season backfill, not just a one-time hiring push. A 5.7% monthly quits rate in this sector means a manager should expect to be replacing seasonal staff throughout November and December, not just filling roles once in October and calling it done.
• Lock in your best current staff before the season gets loud. With fewer big-retailer seasonal jobs flooding the market this year, now is a comparatively good moment to shore up retention with your existing team, since the alternative options competing for their attention are also somewhat diminished this season.

How MyTeamTasks Helps

A smaller, more competitive seasonal hiring market means every new hire needs to become useful fast, without a manager having to personally walk each one through the basics. MyTeamTask lets you build a standard onboarding checklist once and assign it to every new seasonal hire across every shift, with photo-proof completion so you can confirm a task was actually done right instead of just assumed. Real-time monitoring gives you visibility into how each new hire is performing in their first shifts without hovering over them, and for operators running multiple locations, that same visibility makes it easy to see which sites are short-staffed and ramping slowest as the season builds.