The jingle of extra cash from a temporary holiday job sounds good.
But in this tight job market, be ready to compete.
Retailers and delivery companies are hiring thousands of workers this season — and receiving tens of thousands of applications.
At the Glendale Target store, applications are flowing in at the rate of 100 a week for about 50 holiday jobs starting at $8.25 an hour.
The Crate & Barrel in Cherry Creek North had at least 50 applicants for the 10 seasonal workers it recently hired.
“As you can imagine with the economy the way it is, we’ve got no shortage of applications,” said Natalie Godwin, a spokeswoman for UPS, which is hiring 567 holiday workers in metro Denver as part of its 55,000 seasonal jobs nationwide. The jobs pay from $8.50 to $9.50 an hour.
Many of the holiday positions pay the Colorado minimum wage of $7.36 for part- time hours, yet candidates still are lining up.
Unemployment rates have been inching down but remain stubbornly high — 9 percent nationally and 8.3 percent in Colorado.
Sherry Grace had applied for about 50 jobs since April before she was hired recently by the Glendale Target.
“It’s extremely frustrating not finding anything in the job market,” said Grace, who had been looking for work in graphic design and marketing. “So, I was pretty excited to get this job.”
Hired as a temporary cashier and guest-services worker, Grace said she already has been promoted and is likely to stay with Target in a permanent position after the holidays.
Most retailers say they will hire more temps this year than last year under the expectation that Christmas sales will be up from 2010.
A handful of retailers, including Toys R Us and Best Buy, are hiring fewer holiday workers compared with last year.
The growing popularity of online shopping is contributing to the seasonal hiring surge by package-delivery companies.
FedEx is in the process of hiring 400 temporary workers in the Denver area and 20,000 nationally — an 18 percent increase from last year.
“E-commerce continues to grow, and demand increases with more customers shopping and conducting their business online,” FedEx chief executive Frederick Smith said in a statement.
The National Retail Federation is projecting that 46.7 percent of holiday shoppers will buy online, up from 43.9 percent last year.
Overall retail sales in November and December are expected to grow 2.8 percent this year to $466 billion, marginally higher than the 10-year average growth rate of 2.6 percent, according to the NRF.
Douglas County-based outsourcing company TeleTech Holdings said the growth of online commerce is one of the reasons that its seasonal hiring is soaring 63 percent this year to about 4,400 workers at 58 service centers worldwide.
TeleTech also is benefiting from a trend of companies seeking to cut costs by using outside vendors for customer service, marketing and technology functions.
Chief executives “have one foot on the gas pedal and one foot on the brake at the same time,” said Mark Grindeland, TeleTech’s chief marketing officer. “They want to cut costs but still make sure they are meeting demand in the marketplace.”
He said the jury is still out on the prospective strength of the holiday retail season.
“There have been very mixed signals in the marketplace about what the Christmas season will be like,” Grin de land said. “But there’s no shortage of applicants at all, as you can imagine.”
Steve Raabe: 303-954-1948 or sraabe@denverpost.com
