What Changed?
With Christmas days away, the seasonal hiring window has effectively closed — and it fell short. Consumer spending held up through the heart of the holiday shopping season, but employers did not respond with the usual surge in temporary jobs.
What’s notable is not weak demand, but restrained hiring. Retailers and logistics firms met holiday volumes without meaningfully expanding payrolls, signaling a shift in how companies handle peak-season demand in a slower-growth labor environment.
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The Numbers
U.S. nonfarm payrolls increased by 64,000 jobs in November 2025, one of the weakest monthly gains of the year.
Retail trade employment was unchanged in November, showing no seasonally adjusted holiday lift.
Average holiday retail hiring from 2022–2025 totaled approximately 475,000 workers, down from a pre-pandemic average near 605,000.
Employers announced fewer seasonal hiring plans than any comparable period since Challenger tracking began in 2005.
Online holiday spending through early December rose at a high-single-digit year-over-year pace.
This Week’s Briefing
With seasonal hiring largely complete, holiday demand no longer serves as a reliable signal for near-term job growth. Companies absorbed Christmas sales with leaner staffing models, improved logistics, and tighter cost controls — a structural change rather than a timing issue.
Why It Matters
Seasonal hiring has traditionally acted as a pressure valve for the labor market — boosting incomes, supporting consumption, and signaling employer confidence. This year’s muted response suggests firms prioritized margin preservation over headcount expansion, even when demand allowed for it.
For investors, the signal is subtle but important. Fewer seasonal jobs limit short-term income growth and reduce the wage pressure that typically accompanies holiday hiring surges. That dynamic helps explain why spending can remain resilient even as labor momentum softens. It also reinforces a broader trend: productivity gains and operational efficiency are increasingly replacing labor as the first response to demand fluctuations.
Takeaway
The 2025 holiday season underscores a quiet recalibration. Consumers kept spending through Christmas, but companies did not hire the way they once did to support it. The signal to watch isn’t sales strength — it’s how consistently firms resist adding workers even when demand shows up.
— Lauren Brown
Editor, American Ledger