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US - Survey: More employers to hire seasonal hourly workers

September 23, 2013

More seasonal jobs should be available this year than last year, according to a new survey by Snagajob, a job portal for hourly workers. Among hourly hiring managers with responsibility to hire year-end, seasonal workers for the holiday period, 69 percent will make hires this year, up six percentage points from 63 percent in 2012.

“While there have been lackluster gains in the overall job market recently, hourly employers will still have a strong need for seasonal employees,” said Megan Overton, spokesperson for Snagajob. “There has been strength in hiring for retail, restaurants and other customer-service industries, and, according to our Snagajob survey, hiring managers need to staff up to holiday levels, even more so than they did last year.”

Hiring managers, including those not planning to make any hires, expect to hire an average of 7.8 seasonal workers each, a 28 percent improvement over last year’s average of 6.1 seasonal workers each.

Additional finding from the 2013 forecast:

  • Fifty-two percent expect to begin hiring by the end of September or earlier, up  from 48 percent last year. The peak for holiday hiring should be October, when 31 percent of hiring managers will begin hiring.
  • Fifty-three percent of seasonal workers are expected to be full-time hires and 47 percent will be part-time employees.
  • Fifty-two percent of seasonal hires are expected to become permanent employees after the holidays.
  • The average hourly pay for a seasonal job is expected to be $10.80 an hour, up 10 cents from last year.
  • Thirty percent of hiring managers said that the flexibility an applicant has to work the daily hours a company needs is the No. 1 thing a seasonal applicant can bring to the table.

IPSOS Public Affairs, on behalf of Snagajob, conducted the online survey of 1,063 hourly hiring managers from Aug. 21 to 28, 2013.