Kronos survey: Retail hires up

Chelmsford, Mass. U.S. discount, supermarket and restaurant chains are hiring a larger percentage of job applicants than they were seven months ago, an indication that the economy may be improving, workforce management solution provider Kronos reported Tuesday in the first release of its new monthly retail labor index.

Kronos analyzed the 8.9 million job applications received by 68 retailers in the first seven months of the year. In July, 2.99 of every 100 applications resulted in a hire, compared with 2.75 in January, a three-year low, Kronos said.

“We are seeing a turnaround that reflects an increase in confidence by individual managers,” said Robert Yerex, Kronos’s chief economist, in a Bloomberg report. “It may take quite a bit longer to come back than it did to drop off.”

The Kronos Retail Labor Index is defined as the percentage of job applications that result in a hiring, normalized within a scale of 0 to 100. For example, a rate of 2.75% means that per 100 job applications received, 2.75% of them resulted in a hire.

Between January and July 2009, the Kronos Retail Labor Index increased slightly to 2.99%, a relative improvement of 4% from 2.88% in June. The 2.99% represents a 9% increase in the job application to hiring ratio relative to the lowest recorded level of 2.75% in January 2009.

During the first seven months of 2009, the 68 retailers that make up the Kronos sample received 8.9 million job applications, a 12% increase over the same period in 2008 and a 33% increase over the same period in 2007.

The labor index will be released monthly on a pre-announced schedule, according to the Kronos Web site. The next scheduled release date for the index is Oct. 7.