Temporary Holiday Workers May Make Little More Than Minimum Wage

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 11, 5:41PM EST · Published Sep 19, 6:45AM EDT

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Temporary Holiday Workers May Make Little More Than Minimum Wage — © Thinkstock

Part-time holiday workers, who major retailers are hiring by the hundreds of thousands, often do not make much more than the minimum wage. This means their effect on the national economy is quite small.

Among the companies that have announced they will hire the most workers are Macy’s at 80,000, UPS at 100,000 and Target at 120,000. Target said it will pay its holiday temps $10 an hour. That is below the minimum wage in many states, and just above it in others.

Among the illusions about holiday workers is that they add to economic activity during the critical year-end holiday season. At $10 an hour that is unlikely. And most of these workers know they will be out of work by the end of the year.

[nativounit]

While the National Retail Federation and other firms that track holiday sales have not put out their holiday sales forecasts yet, the increase over last year probably will be 3% to 4%, as is the case during most years when the economy is good. E-commerce sales projects almost certainly will be an improvement over 10%. Large online retailers may do even better. Amazon.com revenue rises by between a quarter and a third during the fourth quarter in most years.

Temporary holiday workers will not be buying merchandise for the holidays. Their income will go to more mundane things like the cost of the trips to their jobs or to college tuition. That is what $10 or less an hour buys.

[wallst_email_signup]

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.