Uncertainty over the economy and tariffs forces many retailers to be cautious on holiday hiring

NEW YORK (AP) — Uncertainty over the economy and tariffs is forcing retailers to pull back or delay plans to hire seasonal workers who pack orders at distribution centers, serve shoppers at stores and build holiday displays during the most important selling season of the year.

American Christmas LLC, which creates elaborate holiday installations for commercial properties such as New York's Rockefeller Center and Radio City Music Hall, plans to hire 220 temporary workers and is ramping up recruitment nearly two months later than usual, CEO Dan Casterella said. Last year, it took on 300 people during its busy period.

The main reason? The company wants to offset its tariff bill, which Casterella expects to be as big as $1.5 million this year, more than double last year’s $600,000.

“The issue is if you overstaff and then you underperform, it’s too late," Casterella said. ”I think everyone’s more mindful now than ever. ”

Online behemoth Amazon Inc. said Monday it intends to hire 250,000 full-, part-time and seasonal workers for the crucial shopping period, the same level as a year ago.

But job placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas forecasts overall holiday hiring for the last three months of the year will likely fall under 500,000 positions. That's fewer than last year’s 543,000 level and also marks the smallest seasonal gain in 16 years when retailers hired 495,800 temporary workers, the firm said.

Among other companies cutting holiday payrolls: Radial, an e-commerce company that powers deliveries for roughly 120 companies like Lands’ End and Cole Haan and operates 20 fulfillment sites. It plans to hire 6,500 workers, fewer than last year’s 7,000, and is waiting to the last minute to ramp up hiring for some of its clients, chief human resources officer Sabrina Wnorowski, said.

Bath & Body Works, based in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, said it plans to hire 32,000 workers, below the 32,700 a year ago.

“We saw real strong signals that there’s been a cooling in the labor market, even beyond what our expectations were in the first nine months of the year,” Challenger's senior vice president Andy Challenger said.

Challenger also noted companies are using artificial intelligence bots to replace some workers, particularly those working in call centers. And he's also seeing companies hiring workers closer to when they need them.

Meanwhile, the list of companies staying mum about their specific holiday hiring goals keeps growing. Target Corp., UPS and Macy’s are declining to offer figures, a departure from years past.

Retailers' hiring plans mark the first clues to what’s in store for the U.S. holiday shopping season and come as the U.S. job market has lost momentum this year, partly because Trump’s trade wars have created uncertainty that's paralyzing managers trying to make hiring decisions.

The Labor Department reported in early September that U.S. employers — companies, government agencies and nonprofits — added just 22,000 jobs in August, down from 79,000 in July and well below the 80,000 that economists had expected.

The government shutdown, which started Oct. 1 and has delayed the release of economic reports, could worsen the job picture.

In an attempt to exert more pressure on Democratic lawmakers as the government shutdown continues, the White House budget office said Friday mass firings of federal workers have started.

Analysts will be closely monitoring the shutdown's impact on spending. For now, many retailers say that consumers, while resilient, are selective. Analysts will also be watching how shoppers will react to price increases as a result of high tariff costs in the next few months, experts said.

Given an economic slowdown, holiday spending growth is expected to be smaller than a year ago, according to several forecasts.

Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks spending across all payment methods including cash, predicts that holiday sales will be up 3.6% from Nov. 1 through Dec. 24. That compares with a 4.1% increase last year.

Deloitte Services LP forecasts holiday retail sales to be up between 2.9% to 3.4% from Nov. 1 through Jan. 31. That's compares with 4.2% last year.

And Adobe expects U.S. online sales to hit $253.4 billion from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31, representing a 5.3% growth. That’s smaller than last year's 8.7% growth.

Companies are increasingly wanting to hire workers closer to when they need them, experts said.

“In today's environment, brands are really looking for us to be agile,” Radial's Wnorowski said.

So for some of its clients, Radial will now be hiring two weeks before Thanksgiving weekend, the traditional start for the season, instead of four weeks before the kickoff. Radial is also training holiday hires faster with new technology that's simplifying their tasks. It used to take a couple of days to train a worker, but now it only takes a couple of hours, she said.

Meanwhile, Target will offer current workers additional hours and then will tap into a separate pool of workers— 43,000— who pick up shifts. The Minneapolis-based company also hires seasonal workers across its nearly 2,000 stores and more than 60 distribution facilities to meet demand, it said.

For the past few years, Walmart, the largest private employer, has been offering its workers extra hours available during the holidays, a Walmart spokesperson said, noting it's worked well and the feedback from customers and workers has been “overwhelmingly positive.”

The Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer said there may be some seasonal hiring on a store-by-store basis, but most locations will dole out those hours to current workers.

Waiting until the last minute to hire could mean a mad scramble to find talent, but companies say that with the slowing economy, they don't anticipate having a hard time.

Meanwhile, the temporary halt of the release of economic reports leaves retailers in the dark about sales forecasts and the workers they may need.

“Certainly, for our customers not having access to data will put more of a challenge on their ability to forecast,” Wnorowski of Radial said. “But we’ll stay very close to them as we go into peak and we’ll adjust as soon we see things changing.”

FILE - Shoppers pause near a display of handbags at a Coach store in New York on Sunday, Nov. 19, 2023. (AP Photo/Anne D'Innocenzio, File)

FILE - An employee stocks shelves in the toy section of a Walmart in Secaucus, N.J., Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

People shop among holiday displays at a Sam's Club, Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2025, in Bentonville, Ark. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

FILE - An Amazon same-day delivery fulfillment shipping center is in Woodland Park, New Jersey, on Monday, Dec. 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey, File)

The U.N. Security Council in an emergency meeting Thursday discussed Iran's deadly protests at the request of the United States, even as President Donald Trump left unclear what actions he would take against the Islamic Republic.

Tehran appeared to make conciliatory statements in the lead up to the meeting in an effort to defuse the situation after Trump threatened to take action to stop further killing of protesters, including the execution of anyone detained in Tehran’s bloody crackdown on nationwide protests.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said before the meeting, “All options remain on the table for the president.”

Iran’s crackdown on the demonstrations has killed at least 2,615, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported. The death toll exceeds any other round of protest or unrest in Iran in decades and recalls the chaos surrounding the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The sound of gunfire faded Thursday in the capital, Tehran. The country closed its airspace to commercial flights for hours without explanation early Thursday and some personnel at a key U.S. military base in Qatar were advised to evacuate. The U.S. Embassy in Kuwait also ordered its personnel to “temporary halt” travel to the multiple military bases in the small Gulf Arab country.

Here is the latest:

Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council that Moscow stands in solidary with Iran and backs its view that “hostile external forcers are attempting to exploit the current situation in order to overthrow a government they find objectionable and destroy the Islamic Republic of Iran as a sovereign and independent state.”

Russia called on the U.S. “to stop making themselves out to be a global judge and put an end to their escalatory actions,” he said. Moscow also called on the U.N.’s 193 member nations “to prevent a new large-scale escalation.”

Nebenzia said U.S. actions “risk plunging the region into even bloodier chaos — chaos that could easily spill beyond its borders.”

He said what happened on Iranian streets in recent days went far beyond peaceful protests, pointing to the use of firearms, the killing of civilians and law enforcement officers and arson attacks on medical facilities and public institutions.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council called by the United States that “The people of Iran are demanding their freedom like never before in the Islamic Republic’s brutal history.”

He said the U.S. message is clear: “President Donald J. Trump and the United States of America stand by the brave people of Iran.”

“President Trump is a man of action, not endless talk like we see at the United Nations,” Waltz said. “He has made it clear, all options are on the table to stop the slaughter, and no one should know that better than the leadership of the Iranian regime.”

Waltz dismissed Iranian allegations that the protests are “a foreign plot” and precursor to military action saying: “Everyone in the world needs to know that the regime is weaker than ever before, and therefore is putting forward this lie because of the power of the Iranian people in the streets.”

“They are afraid,” he said. “They are afraid of their own people.”

Iranian-American activist Masih Alinejad told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council that the Islamic Republic is behaving like the Islamic State militant group, “and deserves to be treated like" the group.

She said: “That is how you save innocent lives.”

She warned that “brutal slaughter” in Iran will get much worse if the world doesn’t take “serious action.”

Alinejad said all Iranians are united in seeking freedom and in the face of Iranian military weapons they want action, not “empty words and empty condemnations.”

The U.N. warns possible military strikes on Iran would add “volatility to an already combustible situation” in an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council Thursday.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres “urges maximum restraint at this sensitive moment and calls on all actors to refrain from any actions that could lead to further loss of life or ignite a wider regional escalation,” Assistant Secretary-General Martha Pobee said at the meeting.

Guterres urges maximum restraint and remains convinced that all issues regarding Iran, including its nuclear program, should be addressed through diplomacy and dialogue, she said.

The U.N. chief reaffirms the U.N. Charter’s principles that disputes must be settled peacefully and prohibit the threat or use of force, Pobee said.

Masih Alinejad, one of the most vocal Iranian dissidents in the U.S., accused the United Nations and the Security Council of failing “to respond with the urgency this moment demands” at the emergency U.N. Security Council meeting Thursday.

In October, two purported Russian mobsters were each sentenced to 25 years behind bars for hiring a hitman to kill Alinejad at her Brooklyn home on behalf of the Iranian government.

Sitting across the table from the Iranian ambassador to the U.N., Alinejad, who came after an invitation from the U.S., said that “the members of this body have forgotten the privilege and responsibility of sitting in this room.”

In a stunning moment, even for Security Council standards, Alinejad addressed the Islamic Republic’s representative seated at the council directly.

“You have tried to kill me three times. I have seen my would-be assassin with my own eyes in front of my garden, in my home in Brooklyn,” she said while the Iranian official looked directly ahead, without acknowledging her.

Ahead of the emergency U.N. Security Council meeting Thursday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Secretary-General António Guterres

spoke by phone to discuss the recent deadly protests and Iran’s request for the world body to do more to condemn what they call foreign influence in the Islamic Republic, according to a readout of the call posted on Iranian state TV.

The semiofficial Tasnim news agency reported that Araghchi implored the top U.N. official to live up to the “serious expectation” that Iran’s government and its people have of the U.N.s’ role in condemning what the officials called “illegal U.S. interventions against Iran.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that U.S. President Donald Trump and his team had communicated to Iranian officials that there would be “grave consequences” if killing continues against protesters in Iran.

“The president understands today that 800 executions that were scheduled and supposed to take place yesterday, were halted,” she said.

But Trump continues closely watching the situation, she said.

“All options remain on the table for the president,” Leavitt said.

Abdul Malik al-Houthi, leader of the Iran-backed Yemeni rebel group, said on Thursday that “criminal gangs” were responsible for the situation in Iran, accusing them of carrying out an “American-Israeli” scheme.

“Criminal gangs in Iran killed Iranian citizens, security forces and burned mosques,” he said without providing evidence. “What’s being committed by criminal gangs in Iran is horrific, bearing an American stamp as it includes slaughter and burning some people alive.”

He also said that the U.S. imposed economic sanctions on Iran to create a crisis leading to the current issues in the country with the end goal of controlling Iran.

Yet he said the U.S. has “failed in Iran” and that Iranians “will not yield to America.”

The president of the European Union’s executive arm says the 27-member bloc is looking to strengthen sanctions against Iran as ordinary Iranians continue their protests against Iran’s theocratic government.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Thursday following a meeting of the EU’s commissioners in Limassol, Cyprus that current sanctions against Iran are “weakening the regime.”

Von der Leyen said that the EU is looking to sanction individual Iranians —apart from those who belong to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard — who “are responsible for the atrocities.”

She added that the people of Iran who are “bravely fighting for a change” have the EU’s “full political support.”

Canada’s foreign minister says a Canadian citizen has died in Iran “at the hands of the Iranian authorities.”

“Peaceful protests by the Iranian people — asking that their voices be heard in the face of the Iranian regime’s repression and ongoing human rights violations — has led the regime to flagrantly disregard human life,” Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand posted on social media Thursday.

“This violence must end. Canada condemns and calls for an immediate end to the Iranian regime’s violence,” she added.

Anand said consular officials are in contact with the victim’s family in Canada. She did not provide details.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies announced Thursday that a local staff member was killed and several others were wounded during the deadly protests in Iran over the weekend.

Amir Ali Latifi, an Iranian Red Crescent Society worker, was working in the country’s Gillan province on Jan. 10 when he was killed “in the line of duty,” the organization said in a statement.

“The IFRC is deeply concerned about the consequences of the ongoing unrest on the people of Iran and is closely monitoring the situation in coordination with the Iranian Red Crescent Society,” the statement continued.

U.S. President Donald Trump has hailed as “good news” reports that the death sentence has been lifted for an Iranian shopkeeper arrested in a violent crackdown on protests.

Relatives of 26-year-old Erfan Soltani had said he faced imminent execution.

Trump posed Thursday on his Truth Social site: “FoxNews: ‘Iranian protester will no longer be sentenced to death after President Trump’s warnings. Likewise others.’ This is good news. Hopefully, it will continue!”

Iranian state media denied Soltani had been condemned to death. Iranian judicial authorities said Soltani was being held in a detention facility outside of the capital. Alongside other protesters, he has been accused of “propaganda activities against the regime,” state media said.

Trump sent tensions soaring this week by pledging that “help is on its way” to Iranian protesters and urging them to continue demonstrating against authorities in the Islamic Republic.

On Wednesday Trump signaled a possible de-escalation, saying he had been told that “the killing in Iran is stopping.”

In a joint statement, the foreign ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union’s main foreign policy chief said the G7 members were “gravely concerned” by the developments surrounding the protests, and that they “strongly oppose the intensification of the Iranian authorities’ brutal repression of the Iranian people.”

The statement, published on the EU’s website Thursday, said the G7 were “deeply alarmed at the high level of reported deaths and injuries” and condemned “the deliberate use of violence” by Iranian security forces against protesters.

The G7 members “remain prepared to impose additional restrictive measures if Iran continues to crack down on protests and dissent in violation of international human rights obligations,” the statement said.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi has spoken with his counterpart in Iran, who said the situation was “now stable,” China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

Abbas Araghchi said “he hoped China will play a greater role in regional peace and stability” during the talks, according to the statement from the ministry.

“China opposes imposing its will on other countries, and opposes a return to the ‘law of the jungle’,” Wang said.

“China believes that the Iranian government and people will unite, overcome difficulties, maintain national stability, and safeguard their legitimate rights and interests,” he added. “China hopes all parties will cherish peace, exercise restraint, and resolve differences through dialogue. China is willing to play a constructive role in this regard.”

“We are against military intervention in Iran,” Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told journalists in Istanbul on Thursday. “Iran must address its own internal problems… They must address their problems with the region and in global terms through diplomacy so that certain structural problems that cause economic problems can be addressed.”

Ankara and Tehran enjoy warm relations despite often holding divergent interests in the region.

Fidan said the unrest in Iran was rooted in economic conditions caused by sanctions, rather than ideological opposition to the government.

Iranians have been largely absent from an annual pilgrimage to Baghdad, Iraq, to commemorate the death of Imam Musa al-Kadhim, one of the twelve Shiite imams.

Many Iranian pilgrims typically make the journey every year for the annual religious rituals.

Streets across Baghdad were crowded with pilgrims Thursday. Most had arrived on foot from central and southern provinces of Iraq, heading toward the shrine of Imam al-Kadhim in the Kadhimiya district in northern Baghdad,

Adel Zaidan, who owns a hotel near the shrine, said the number of Iranian visitors this year compared to previous years was very small. Other residents agreed.

“This visit is different from previous ones. It lacks the large numbers of Iranian pilgrims, especially in terms of providing food and accommodation,” said Haider Al-Obaidi.

Europe’s largest airline group said Thursday it would halt night flights to and from Tel Aviv and Jordan's capital Amman for five days, citing security concerns as fears grow that unrest in Iran could spiral into wider regional violence.

Lufthansa — which operates Swiss, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Eurowings — said flights would run only during daytime hours from Thursday through Monday “due to the current situation in the Middle East.” It said the change would ensure its staff — which includes unionized cabin crews and pilots -- would not be required to stay overnight in the region.

The airline group also said its planes would bypass Iranian and Iraqi airspace, key corridors for air travel between the Middle East and Asia.

Iran closed its airspace to commercial flights for several hours early Thursday without explanation.

A spokesperson for Israel’s Airport Authority, which oversees Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, said the airport was operating as usual.

Iranian state media has denied claims that a young man arrested during Iran’s recent protests was condemned to death. The statement from Iran’s judicial authorities on Thursday contradicted what it said were “opposition media abroad” which claimed the young man had been quickly sentenced to death during a violent crackdown on anti-government protests in the country.

State television didn’t immediately give any details beyond his name, Erfan Soltani. Iranian judicial authorities said Soltani was being held in a detention facility outside of the capital. Alongside other protesters, he has been accused of “propaganda activities against the regime,” state media said.

New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters said Thursday that his government was “appalled by the escalation of violence and repression” in Iran.

“We condemn the brutal crackdown being carried out by Iran’s security forces, including the killing of protesters,” Peters posted on X.

“Iranians have the right to peaceful protest, freedom of expression, and access to information – and that right is currently being brutally repressed,” he said.

Peters said his government had expressed serious concerns to the Iranian Embassy in Wellington.

Women cross an intersection in downtown Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

A demonstrator lights a cigarette with a burning poster depicting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a rally in support of Iran's anti-government protests, in Holon, Israel, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Protesters participate in a demonstration in support of the nationwide mass protests in Iran against the government, in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Protesters participate in a demonstration in support of the nationwide mass protests in Iran against the government, in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)