The National Retail Federation expects holiday spending to top $1 trillion this year, with growth of about 4.2%, while seasonal hiring stays muted. Retail Dive covered the forecast and the call that followed it. The pairing is the story: nominal spending reaching a milestone while employers hire cautiously describes an economy where prices are doing much of the work and households are managing rather than celebrating. For brands, that combination makes the quality of published information more commercially important than the size of the media budget.
A Trillion Dollars, Priced Carefully
NRF's chief economist acknowledged that inflation contributes to nominal growth, with higher diesel prices and increased memory prices pressuring popular gifting categories such as electronics. The forecast excludes gas stations, automobile dealers and restaurants, which makes it a cleaner read on goods retailing than the headline suggests. A trillion dollars is a milestone, but the number that matters operationally is the volume behind it, and volume is what most retailers are quietly worried about.
Consumers have stayed resilient in their shopping habits through the year, according to the trade group's leadership, even as sentiment has been weak. September retail sales rose 6.7% year over year, a gain driven largely by higher pricesthe monthly retail sales series supports that reading: households are still spending, but a large share of the increase is price rather than quantity. When price carries the growth, the retailers that win are the ones that can explain value clearly enough to survive a comparison.
Hiring Stays Low in a Low Fire Market
Fewer Seasonal Workers, Same Workload
Last year the trade group projected retailers would hire between 265,000 and 365,000 seasonal workers, down from 442,000 in 2024, and this year's guidance points to a similarly cautious posture. The phrase used on the call, a low hire low fire environment, describes employers who are reluctant to add staff and equally reluctant to cut. Dick's Sporting Goods is hiring fewer seasonal workers than a year agoRetail Dive's hiring report shows the pattern extending into individual chains rather than staying at the aggregate level.
Scheduling With Fewer Hands
For store operations, thinner seasonal staffing shifts the burden to scheduling and task prioritization. The hours that used to absorb peak demand now have to be earned through better forecasting, and the tasks that used to be handled by extra hands have to be sequenced. This is where store technology stops being a convenience and becomes a capacity decision, because the alternative to a ranked task list is a queue at the register.
Diesel, Memory and the Gifting Basket
Two input costs deserve specific attention because they hit gifting directly. Diesel affects the cost of moving goods and the price of fuel at the pump, which competes with gift spending in lower income households. Memory affects the price of electronics, which are among the most popular gift categories. Toy prices are up 4.2% ahead of the holidaysRetail Dive's toy pricing check adds a third: toys are entering the season with higher tickets, which changes both the basket and the promotional calendar.
Assortment Architecture
The operational response is not uniform discounting. It is assortment architecture: a clear entry price point that keeps the category accessible, a mid tier that carries the margin, and a premium tier that absorbs the input cost. shoppers cutting small indulgences from budgets indicates consumers are trimming the small extras first, which means the entry tier has to be genuinely good rather than a stripped-down version of the mid tier.
Forecast Error Is a Data Problem
Every holiday forecast will be wrong somewhere, and the useful question is where. A brand that tracks its own search demand, store-level availability and price position can compare its trajectory against the aggregate forecast monthly and adjust earlier than competitors who wait for sell-through reports. The advantage is not a better forecast; it is a shorter feedback loop.
Data quality determines how short that loop can be. Moody's upgraded its retail and apparel outlook as tariff refunds eased margin pressurethe ratings note suggests input cost pressure may be easing, which makes price-driven demand harder to read: if costs fall and prices follow, nominal growth slows even when volume improves. Brands that only watch revenue will misread that as weakness and cut investment at the wrong moment.
What Brands Should Publish Before November
Three categories of information do the most work in the weeks before peak. First, availability and delivery cutoffs, stated plainly and kept current, because a promise that is wrong is worse than no promise. Second, price and promotion rules, including exclusions, so that a comparison shopper can evaluate without contacting support. Third, product facts that answer the questions people actually ask, from compatibility to care instructions, in a form that can be quoted by an answer engine.
None of this is a campaign. It is maintenance work that determines whether a brand is legible when a shopper is deciding. In a season where spending may pass a trillion dollars largely on price, legibility is the cheapest form of competitive advantage available, and it compounds into the next season rather than expiring in December.
