In the United States, government stimulus efforts aimed, among other things, to encourage consumers to spend more, to keep the economy going. In response, and as lockdown mandates start to lift around the country, some retailers are not just recovering but gaining ground, relative to the damages they suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic. But other sectors continue to struggle, without any end in sight.

To understand these effects, a key measure is employment. That is, we can categorize rebounders and strugglers according to whether they are hiring back laid-off workers or even expanding their personnel rolls, or if their numbers remain depressed. Such an employment-based analysis reveals a few notable trends.

In particular, general merchandise retailers such as Walmart and Costco continue to do well. They were perhaps the best protected from the damage of the pandemic, because they were quickly classified as essential. Their employees thus continued reporting for work. As consumers purchased more items for their homes, these stores even had to expand their human resources, such that employment in this retail sector was 10 percent higher in August 2020 than in February, prior to the spread of the coronavirus in the United States.

Some specialty retailers also are looking for more help, including those that sell electronics, garden supplies, and appliances. Their concentration aligns with consumers’ enhanced interest in entertaining themselves at home, whether by playing video games or by planting a garden. But other specialty retailers, such as those that sell apparel and those located in malls, continue to eliminate jobs. Across clothing stores for example, employment rates have dropped by about 30 percent since February.

Another notable effect involves primarily online retailers, which had to hire massively to keep up with the dramatic increase in demand from consumers quarantining and social distancing. Even as some restrictions have loosened, these retailers continue on a hiring spree. At Amazon, those increases span nearly every branch of its operations, including 175,000 warehouse and delivery workers and 3500 office and corporate personnel. Such jobs may be especially beneficial, in terms of economic recovery efforts, in that unlike many retail jobs, they are not necessarily temporary or seasonal.

Still, even as retailers have brought back many jobs, retail employment is down. The sector cut 2.4 million jobs in the spring, and only 1.7 of those have been rehired. For retail workers, the best bet might be to pay attention to the types of retailers to which they are applying. Finding an employment sector that is rebounding seems more likely to support a successful job search than submitting applications to a sector that remains constrained by COVID-19.

Discussion Question: 

1. Which sorts of retailers have been most affected, in terms of their human resources, by the COVID-19 pandemic?
2. Are existing employment trends likely to persist?
3. How has the pandemic effected Amazon’s hiring strategy in particular?

Source: Eric Morath and Danny Dougherty, “Retail Stores Add Jobs as Shoppers Return,” The Wall Street Journal, September 5, 2020; Sebastian Herrera, “Amazon Is Hiring and Expanding Its Offices: Inside the Tech Giant’s Strategy,” The Wall Street Journal, September 4, 2020.