Kronos Retail Labor Index Shows Retail Hiring Dipped in December; Up Slightly From Last Year

CHELMSFORD, Mass., Jan. 5, 2012 — Kronos Incorporated today announced the January release of the Kronos^® Retail Labor Index™, a family of metrics and indices that characterize the current state of the demand and supply sides of the labor market within the U.S. retail sector. The January report includes data for December 2011. The analysis and write-up is prepared by Macroeconomic Advisers LLC, and is available on the Kronos Retail Labor Index website.

News Facts

• The Kronos Retail Labor Index: (This index is defined as the ratio of hires to applications within a given month, expressed as a percentage. A level of 3.0 percent means that for every 100 applications received, three hires occurred). The Kronos Retail Labor Index dipped to 3.5 percent in December 2011 from a downwardly revised 3.8 percent in November.
• Retail Hiring Level: The retailers representing 18,362 distributed locations across the U.S. that make up the Kronosdata sample made 32,570 hires (seasonally adjusted) in December 2011, down 7.6 percent from an upwardly revised 35,259 hires in November 2011. Even with the decline in December, monthly hires remain above lows reached during the recession and suggest retail hiring has improved modestly following sharp declines in 2008 and 2009.
• Retail Applications Level: The number of applications received by retailers included in the Kronos sample declined 1.2 percent to 922,474 in December 2011, from an upwardly revised 933,837 in November 2011, all on a seasonally adjusted basis. The level of applications in December was down nearly 3 percent from its level one year ago.
• Retail 60-Day Retention Rate: The 60-day retention rate, measured as the number of hires who remain employed for at least the first 60 days divided by the total number of hires made in that month, decreased to 83.1 percent (seasonally adjusted) in August from 83.8 percent in July. (Note: There is a four-month lag on this indicator as two months are required to measure whether a hire remained employed for 60 days and Kronos customers have two months to return data on separations.)

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