Kronos index shows signs of recovery in retail hiring

CHELMSFORD, Mass. — Kronos Incorporated has unveiled the first installment of its Kronos Retail Labor Index, a family of metrics and indices that analyze the relationship between the demand and supply sides of the labor market within the U.S. retail sector. The Kronos Retail Labor Index provides a distinct and early indicator of the overall state of the retail sector. The report will be made available on a monthly basis.

There are four related measures of interest in the report:

The Kronos Retail Labor Index: This metric 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 percent means that per 100 job applications received, 2.75 of them resulted in a hire.

• The Kronos Retail Labor Index decreased fairly steadily from 7.1 percent in October 2006 to a three-year low of 2.75 percent in January 2009.
• Between January and July 2009, the Kronos Retail Labor Index increased slightly to 2.99 percent, a relative improvement of 4 percent from 2.88 percent in June.
• The figure of 2.99 percent represents a 9-percent increase in the job application to hiring ratio relative to the lowest recorded level of 2.75 percent in January 2009. While showing a small but steady improvement over the last six months, the July number is significantly below the three-year high of 7.1 percent recorded in October 2006.

Retail Applications Level: During the first seven months of 2009, the 68 retailers who make up the Kronos sample received 8.9 million job applications, a 12 percent increase over the same period in 2008 and a 33 percent increase over the same period in 2007.

Retail Hiring Level: Of the 15 million applications received by these retailers during the last 12 months (August 2008 through July 2009), 529,000 resulted in hires. This represents a 28 percent reduction in hirings compared to the prior 12 months (August 2007 through July 2008).

Retail Employee Retention Rate: Consistently declining rates of retention on a year-over-year basis between late-2006 and mid-2007 have been followed by a steady and much larger increase in retention in 2008 and 2009.