Future Shop and sister company Best Buy Canada plan to hire fewer holiday employees than they did last Christmas, partly due to the trend toward customers shopping online.
Future Shop said Tuesday that it will hire 3,000 part-time workers in Canada and Best Buy will hire about 1,500 part-time employees, both down slightly from last year.
"We've got a 50 per cent increase in online traffic this year and online sales, so we've adjusted a little bit of that for our in-store experience," said Chris Taylor, vice-president of human resources at Future Shop in Burnaby.
Both chains have already hired about 550 seasonal staff to their e-commerce ranks to meet changing shopping patterns.
"It's an increasingly important part of our business and it has been growing substantially year after year," added Janice Antaya-Finlayson, vice-president of human resources at Best Buy Canada.
Last year, Future Shop added 4,000 seasonal workers to its almost 10,000 employees. Best Buy Canada added more than 2,000 part-time employees last holiday season to its 6,000 employees.
Online retail giant Amazon.com Inc. said it's hiring 50,000 temporary workers at its order centres across the United States this holiday season.
The Seattle-based online retailer said it expects "thousands" of those it hires to stay on full time.
