Macy’s is slashing jobs, a harbinger of hard times for retailers after a holiday season that saw a noticeable shift to online shopping and away from physical stores.
The nation’s largest department store chain, which also operates Bloomingdale’s, said late Wednesday it is cutting up to 4,800 jobs and trimming its profit outlook after a miserable holiday season.
‘I think Macy’s is likely to be a canary in a coal mine,’ said Ken Perkins, president of Retail Metrics, a retail research firm. He said retailers witnessed an acceleration of the shift toward online and mobile holiday spending in 2015.
About 2,110 of the job cuts at Macy’s will come from reducing staffing at stores, eliminating duplications in back-office operations and consolidating regional store groups.
The remaining 2,710 job cuts will come from the 40 store closings that Macy’s announced last fall, spokesman Jim Sluzewski said.
As of Wednesday, Macy’s had about 163,000 workers.
The moves are part of Macy’s ongoing campaign to position itself to compete in a retail world where increasingly demanding shoppers are going back and forth between stores and their mobile devices.
Analysts expect more retailers to announce they’re shrinking their store counts further and making other moves to make their organizations leaner.
With store traffic down, stores had to discount more. Mother Nature also hurt holiday sales too, particularly at clothing stores. Unseasonably warm weather in some regions in the U.S. squelched shoppers’ demand for cold-weather goods.
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