Montana Freight Companies Hiring to Gear Up for Online Holiday Shopping
It’s November, and that means retailers in Billings, Montana, are beefing up their workforce ahead of the annual surge of shoppers.
But as online shopping continues to grow, shippers are under increasing pressure to find workers to handle and move the increase in boxes of Christmas presents and food for holiday meals.
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“We definitely need seasonal employees in your area this year,” said Seattle-based spokesman Dan McMackin of UPS, which operates a distribution center on Lampman Drive in Billings.
UPS Inc. ranks No. 1 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest U.S. and Canadian for-hire carriers.
The National Retail Federation expects retailers nationwide will add 690,000 jobs this holiday season, slightly above last year’s numbers. E-commerce sales are expected to grow 7% to 10%, fueling demand for drivers, warehouse workers and distribution employees.
Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is the traditional start of the make-or-break holiday shopping season, which many retailers count on to turn a profit for the year. Planning for those busy weeks is already underway.
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In September, officials at Minneapolis, Minnesota-based Target Corp. announced they are hiring 7,500 seasonal employees for their 13 distribution centers nationwide.
That’s about 1,000 more employees than Target hired for those centers last year. Company officials say they need those employees to both replenish store inventory and fill online orders.
Target is hiring 70,000 seasonal workers in its stores nationwide, including the two in Billings.
UPS is looking to hire 120 seasonal employees in Billings and 320 statewide, according to McMackin. Nationwide, the Atlanta-based shipper plans to hire 95,000 employees, a number that’s essentially been flat for about three years, McMackin added.
“We have been using more automation to sort packages, so perhaps that is keeping the number of total seasonal hires down somewhat… We are doing a better job of planning what volume will look like for the upcoming season. We start planning in January for our peak season, and we are working earlier with large shippers to get better forecasts. Those things help us hire the appropriate number of seasonal hires,” McMackin wrote in an e-mail.
UPS has 267 total employees during the normal season in Billings and 1,064 in Montana.
During an Oct. 26 job fair hosted by Billings Job Service at the Radisson Hotel, 28 employers set up booths to seek seasonal workers, said Kathy Brown, an agency employment specialist.
“They had a pretty good turnout,” she said.
Large retailers dominated the event, but employers were also looking to fill jobs handling and sorting packages, Brown said.
One such company was Matheson Flight Extenders, which contracts with big shippers to unload freight at Billings Logan International Airport.
The Sacramento, Calif.-based company is seeking to hire 35 to 40 workers for the holidays, recruiter Cali Snedigar said last week.
It’s a difficult task, given the area’s traditionally low unemployment rate, she said. Yellowstone County’s jobless rate was 3.2% in September.
“Every year is just as difficult as the previous year,” Snedigar said.
Snedigar was hired two years ago because Matheson wanted to boost its labor force in Billings, particularly at the year-end peak time.
A regular morning shift typically has about 60 workers and rises to more than 100 for the holidays. The evening shift is at 40 for non-peak times and swells to 75 to 80 at year end.
While shipping jobs are in demand now, employment trends aren’t showing they’re replacing sales clerks and other in-store workers in Montana during the holidays, according to Barb Wagner, a state economist.
Wagner noted that retail hiring patterns could indicate a lengthening holiday season since the Great Recession, with employers doing more hiring in November and keeping employees until February.
“Looking at straight percentages suggests that retail seems to be hiring a bit earlier and doing less seasonal hiring in Montana and in the U.S. Whether or not that is due to online shopping is not clear,” Wagner wrote in an e-mail.
