Retailers plan to add about 450,000 seasonal jobs this holiday season, according to the outlook Challenger, Gray & Christmas released Sept. 23. That would fall below last year’s total of 461,500 seasonal hires, a number Challenger had already flagged as the smallest holiday hiring season since 2008. If the 450,000 forecast holds, retailers will have posted back-to-back years of the weakest seasonal hiring in nearly two decades, at a time when overall retail sales have kept growing even as the temporary workforce behind them shrinks.
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450,000 Jobs, Down From 461,500
Challenger’s outlook puts this year’s seasonal retail hiring at roughly 450,000 positions nationwide, a decline from the 461,500 seasonal jobs retailers added in 2025. Both figures come from the same Challenger, Gray & Christmas outlook, published Sept. 23, which tracks announced retail hiring plans each fall rather than actual government payroll counts. The firm frames the 2026 number as a forecast, not a fixed count, since individual retailers can still add or cut planned seasonal positions as the shopping season plays out, and a strong or weak October sales report can move a retailer’s plans in either direction before Black Friday arrives. Challenger compiles the estimate from hiring announcements, job postings and direct outreach to major retailers, a method that captures announced plans rather than a government count of actual jobs filled, which is one reason its total can move as more retailers finalize their plans in the weeks ahead.
The Weakest Two Years Since 2008
Challenger’s report describes 2025’s 461,500 seasonal hires as the smallest holiday hiring season since 2008, the year the financial crisis hit retail spending hard. A 2026 total near 450,000 would push that record even lower, making this the second straight year retailers have posted their weakest seasonal hiring since the recession. The comparison is specifically to 2008’s hiring levels, not to sales or store-closure counts from that year, which followed a different pattern. Retail employment did eventually recover after 2008, but the seasonal hiring pattern Challenger tracks has never fully returned to its pre-recession scale, and the 2025 and 2026 totals mark the two lowest points in that entire stretch.
Not Every Retailer Is Pulling Back
The industry-wide slowdown does not mean every chain is hiring less. Challenger’s same outlook lists Spirit Halloween, the seasonal costume retailer, bringing on 52,000 associates across 1,575 storefronts this fall, a hiring plan that did not shrink alongside the broader retail total. That single chain’s seasonal hiring equals roughly one-ninth of the entire 450,000-job forecast, a larger share than most individual retail chains typically account for in a national seasonal hiring count, a reminder that a national average can mask sharp differences between one retailer’s plans and the next. A shrinking national total can still come with a handful of retailers expanding their seasonal footprint, even as most others hire fewer temporary workers than they did the year before, which is part of why Challenger names specific chains in its outlook rather than reporting only the industry-wide sum.
Why the Total Keeps Shrinking
Part of the explanation sits in how retailers have already restructured their permanent staffing. Government tracking of retail trade jobs, reviewed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, found that the seasonal hiring buildup from 2022 through 2025 averaged around 475,000 workers, well below the roughly 605,000 average from 2018 through 2021, even as retailers kept more of those seasonal hires on staff past January than they used to, a shift the agency’s data ties to retailers converting more seasonal roles into permanent ones rather than laying off the entire temporary crew each January the way they once did. A retailer that already runs closer to its holiday staffing needs year-round simply has fewer temporary slots left to fill each fall. Rising costs for wages, benefits and store operations more broadly have also pushed some retailers toward relying more on their existing staff working extra hours during the holiday rush instead of hiring and training an entirely new seasonal crew each year.
What a Smaller Forecast Means for a Holiday Job Search
A lower national hiring total generally means more applicants competing for each seasonal opening, particularly at the large national chains Challenger’s outlook tracks most closely. Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the outplacement firm that has published hiring and job-cut counts for decades, based this year’s estimate on hiring announcements retailers had made public as of late September, so the final 2026 total could still shift once more retailers finalize their holiday staffing plans in October and November. A worker searching for a seasonal position this fall may find the biggest national chains posting fewer openings than in past years, even while smaller or fast-growing retailers, like Spirit Halloween, continue hiring at or above last year’s pace, so the overall 450,000 total is worth less to an individual applicant than the specific plans of the retailers actually hiring in their area.
The Budget Math a Hiring Forecast Skips
A national hiring forecast counts how many seasonal jobs retailers plan to create in total; it says nothing about how steady any one worker’s hours will be once hired, how many weeks a given store will actually keep someone on, or what happens to that worker’s bank account if a shift gets cut. A smaller hiring season also means more competition for the seasonal openings that do exist, which can push some workers into shorter contracts or fewer scheduled hours than in a stronger year.
The Bank Account & Debt Protection Kit also covers stopping overdraft fees before they start and the steps for making a debt collector validate a debt, for a worker whose seasonal income runs on a shorter or less certain schedule this year.
Open the protected-funds and dispute log in The Bank Account & Debt Protection Kit.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor against Challenger’s published hiring outlook.
