We know from our research that retailers' payroll-to-sales ratios are stabilizing. In other words the ratio of employees in stores as a percentage of sales is starting to follow a bell curve - 50% of retailers keeping it flat, 25% decreasing and 25% increasing. This is an improvement over prior years, when a higher percentage were still decreasing payroll in stores.

The problem is that holiday sales forecasts are really murky, and the economy still very fragile, so I don't see a lot of retailers betting on higher sales and increasing their hiring over last year.

Hope that helps.

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Paula Rosenblum Replied on Sept. 9, 2011

I don't. Employees are needed in the store to help create a differentiated experience, and also, on-line sales are still a relatively low percentage of total sales. Certainly on-line influences most purchases, but consummation still happens at the store more often.

Paula Rosenblum Replied on Sept. 9, 2011

PS The key to payroll to sales RATIOs is that the payroll moves in relation to sales. It's the ratio that's important.

Stafford Williamson

President, DaoChi Energy of Arizona (div. of Williamson Information Technologies Corp.)

Posted on Nov. 28, 2011

The fact that Black Friday produced a 7% sales increase over last year (according to ABC News on Sunday) was not entirely due to the opening after midnight effort to extend hours (at least not alone). That exceeded even my optimisitic prediction of 6% for mass retailers and 8.5 to 9% increase for luxury merchants.
There aren't that many shopping days left in this season, but the number of hours the temps are called to work should increase payrolls slightly (but hopefully only enough to match the sales growth, for the retailers sake).

Sincerely,
Stafford "Doc" Williamson
http://daochienergy.com