Holiday season temporary workers harder to find in Fort Wayne metro area

“The need for qualified candidates seems to increase every year whether it be seasonal or not. A 3.1 percent unemployment rate certainly makes the candidate pool shrink because there’s less people available to work,” he said.

Preparation for Christmas shopping among companies that publish the books, toys and other products people buy as gifts contributes to a temporary hiring bump in the summer, he said, then storing, selling and shipping the merchandise requires winter seasonal help.

In some cases, college students who have worked summer jobs to help retailers and other employers cover for workers on vacation return to provide seasonal help during their Christmas breaks, Callahan said.

From Sept. 1 through the end of November, Burning Glass Technologies estimates Fort Wayne employers posted 430 jobs for temporary and seasonal work, said Dave Shatkowski, communications director at the Indiana Department of Workforce Development.

A clear picture of actual hiring, labor force and unemployment trends for the metro area will not emerge until official current employment statistics and local area unemployment statistics are released in January, he said.

Minneapolis-based Target was among the department store retailers in Fort Wayne hiring temporary help for the holiday season. Its local seasonal workers were among 100,000 it planned to hire this year.

“While I don’t have numbers specifically for Fort Wayne, I can tell you that Target plans to hire about 1,600 seasonal team members in Indiana this year to support our holiday efforts, an increase from 2016,” said spokeswoman Jacqueline DeBuse. “Target continuously elevates the store experience and we want to be fully staffed for the holiday season, which is why we’ve increased the number of seasonal hires in 2017.”

Logistics operations in the area need hundreds or temporary employment for the holiday season.

United Parcel Service, for example, needed 82 part-time package handlers, 131 full-time driver helpers and 15 full-time drivers, which spokesman Dan McMackin said was about the same as last year.

“We began hiring back in September and will continue to hire throughout December. Our peak season runs through the end of January due to return shipments and purchases made after the holiday using gift cards,” he said.

Wages at UPS range from $10.20 an hour up to about $32, depending on the job, McMackin said.

“Low unemployment is definitely a factor in our local hiring efforts across the country and we are using all of the tools we have available to get the applicant flow we need – social media, job fairs, advertising, college recruiting, local editorial coverage and more,” he said.

UPS planned to hire about 95,000 seasonal workers across the country this year, he said.

An analysis of U.S. Labor Department Bureau of Labor Statistics data released last month by Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. showed overall seasonal retail hiring had declined in October as transportation and warehousing sector employment increased.

“The Amazon effect and consumers’ online shopping habits are definitely shifting seasonal job gains from traditional retailers to warehousing and transportation positions. New technology in retail also eliminates the need for some back-office operations, which may lead to less hiring,” CEO John Challenger said in a statement. “However, this new technology may just change the nature of the work rather than replace workers altogether. For instance, Walmart instituted shelf-scanning robots in their stores that flag issues for human workers to fix.”

The data showed 15.8 million U.S. workers were employed in the retail sector during October, and it was providing about 56,000 fewer jobs than a year earlier.

Employment in the the nation’s transportation and warehousing sectors increased by about 111,400 jobs, to about 5.2 million.