Two massive forces are colliding in retail this quarter, and they’re pulling in opposite directions. Deloitte projects holiday retail sales will reach between $1.70 trillion and $1.71 trillion from November 2026 through January 2027, a 4.0% to 4.8% increase over last year, with e-commerce growing even faster at 7.5% to 8.4%. Consumers are backing that forecast with their wallets, too: NRF’s most recent holiday survey found shoppers planning to spend an average of $890.49 per person on gifts, food, decorations, and seasonal extras, the second-highest figure in the survey’s 23-year history.

On the other side of that equation is the workforce meant to deliver it. Last Q4, employers added just 372,520 seasonal hires nationwide, the lowest number of announced seasonal hires since Challenger, Gray & Christmas began tracking the data in 2012, undercutting even the “lowest since the 2009 recession” forecast economists had already flagged as alarming. And it’s not that the workers aren’t out there: job seeker interest in holiday roles has been running roughly 27% ahead of the prior year, while postings have grown by less than 3%. The candidates are searching. The listings just aren’t keeping pace. We’re digging into what’s driving that gap, what it costs a brand that doesn’t close it, and the staffing playbook that works when hiring alone can’t get the job done.

It’s tempting to read a widening gap between record sales and record-thin staffing as an argument for e-commerce over stores. But the truth is physical stores still account for roughly 85% of U.S. retail sales, according to Colliers’ 2026 retail report, and e-commerce’s faster growth rate is coming off a much smaller base than in-store sales. The stores are still where most of the holiday’s $1.7 trillion gets spent, which means the stores are still where most of the risk sits if the shelves are messy, the demo units are dark, or nobody’s there to help a shopper make a decision.

Why the Gap Is Wider This Year

This isn’t a one-quarter blip. “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,” Andy Challenger, senior vice president at Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said of the trend. Retailers are managing rising costs, uncertain trade policy, and pressure to do more with less, all at the exact moment their stores need to look their best.

The result is a market where fewer retailers are willing to publicly commit to a hiring number at all. Walmart has leaned on extra hours for its existing workforce rather than a big, publicized seasonal push. UPS, which hired 125,000 seasonal workers in 2024, has stayed quiet on a number again this year, part of a broader pattern: Challenger’s latest outlook notes that only a handful of major retailers and carriers have released a 2026 headcount target at all. Target’s most recent announcement didn’t include a number either, a departure from the specific hiring pledges it’s made in past years, in favor of leaning on its flexible “On-Demand” worker pool. Not every brand is pulling back, though: Spirit Halloween is running its largest hiring push in company history this year, more than 52,000 seasonal associates across its pop-up stores, proof that a clear, well-timed staffing plan can still land in this market.

What an Understaffed Q4 Actually Costs You

A thin labor market doesn’t just mean an empty job board. It means real, measurable risk on your retail floor, showing up in the moments shoppers actually notice, not just in a headcount spreadsheet back at headquarters. Ask yourself:

• If a demo unit goes down the week of Black Friday, how long until someone notices?
• If a planogram isn’t set to spec across your top 200 doors, who catches it?
• If a shopper can’t find your product or can’t get a question answered, do they wait, or walk?

Every one of those moments is a missed opportunity to convert foot traffic into revenue during the single biggest selling window of the year. Undertrained, understaffed, or simply absent coverage doesn’t just cost a single sale. It chips away at the in-store experience that builds lasting impressions and brand loyalty long after the holidays end, at the exact moment a first-time holiday shopper is deciding whether your brand earns a repeat visit in January.

Why Waiting Until November Makes It Worse

Here’s the part of the labor squeeze that’s easy to miss: candidates aren’t the scarce resource this year, timing is. Job seekers have been searching for holiday roles well ahead of when employers typically post them, which means the strongest applicants and the most reliable field teams are already being scooped up by the brands that started planning in late summer. A staffing plan that kicks off in November isn’t just late; it’s competing for whoever’s left after everyone else has already staffed up. Brands that lock in coverage now, while the market is still sorting itself out, start the season with a full bench instead of a scramble.

The Staffing Playbook for Record Demand

Retailers who protect their Q4 aren’t the ones chasing the same shrinking seasonal labor pool as everyone else. They’re the ones who’ve built a coverage model that doesn’t depend on it.

Surge-Ready Coverage, Not Slow-Ramp Hiring: A newly hired seasonal associate needs weeks to learn a planogram, a POS system, and a brand’s standards. A pre-trained field team doesn’t. No open shifts. No empty demo stations. No lost sales while someone learns the ropes during your busiest week.

One Partner, Every Location: Coordinating a patchwork of local staffing agencies across hundreds of stores is its own labor drain, and every handoff, every regional vendor, every separate point of contact is a chance for something to fall through the cracks right when you can least afford it. One merchandising partner means one point of accountability, one schedule, and one team that already knows your brand standards, coast to coast, whether you’re covering ten flagship doors or two thousand.

Trained Specialists, Not Warm Bodies: In a tight labor market, it’s tempting to fill a shift with anyone available. But an undertrained associate can’t answer a product question, troubleshoot a broken display, or catch a compliance issue before it costs you a sale. Specialists convert, engage, and protect your brand; warm bodies just occupy space.

Real-Time Visibility Into Every Shift: If you can’t see whether a location is covered, you can’t act before a gap becomes a stockout. Live reporting and photo documentation from every store, every shift, turn staffing from a guessing game into a managed, measurable operation, so problems get caught and corrected in hours, not discovered after the season’s already over and the sale is already gone.

Fast Response When Displays Go Down: Interactive and demo displays are some of the hardest-working real estate in your store, and the busiest weeks of the year are exactly when they’re most likely to break. A rapid break/fix response keeps those touchpoints running instead of quietly costing you sales for days at a time.

At Channel Partners, our Merchandising teams are built for exactly this moment. Every engagement includes a dedicated Client Service Manager, your single point of contact from staffing plan to peak-week execution, backed by decades of retail merchandising experience and a field network built to flex from a handful of flagship doors to thousands of locations without missing a beat. Our teams visit your locations on a consistent, documented schedule, so every display is set to plan and every issue gets caught and resolved before a shopper ever notices. And when an interactive display or demo unit goes down during peak week, our Break Fix & Continuity teams provide rapid response and ongoing maintenance, so a broken unit never quietly turns into a week of lost sales.

Our goal isn’t to hand you a list of temp workers and wish you luck through January. It’s to become an extension of your team, one that shows up ready, stays accountable through the season’s busiest weeks, and gives you the visibility to manage Q4 with confidence instead of crossed fingers, from the first day of surge staffing through the final return processed in the new year. That’s the difference between staffing for the season you hoped for and staffing for the one you’re actually going to have.

Staff for the Q4 You’re Actually Going to Have

The labor market isn’t going to loosen up between now and Black Friday, and it’s unlikely to loosen up by next year either. Retailers who win this holiday season won’t be the ones who hired the most seasonal workers; they’ll be the ones who covered every location, every shift, with a team that was ready on day one and didn’t need six weeks to get there.

Ready to close the gap between your sales forecast and your staffing plan?

Start the conversation with Channel Partners today, before your Q4 budget locks. Send us an RFP or get a Client Service Manager on the phone this week, and we’ll build a staffing plan around the labor market you’re actually facing this season, not the one your budget was built for last spring.