Hiring in a pandemic: lessons from the rise of "essential retail"

Rodney McMullen needs deli managers in Chicago. He needs pharmacy technicians in Tupelo, Miss. He needs e-commerce clerks everywhere from Georgia to Alaska. Most of the U.S. economy is reeling, but the chief executive of Kroger is on an epic hiring spree.

Say hello to the turbulent, vital new world of “essential retail.” While countless U.S. storefronts are shuttered because of shelter-in-place restrictions, it’s a different story for grocers, pharmacies and food delivery services. All three of these industries have become lifelines for a nation, making sure that people still get needed food and medicines, no matter what.

Kroger recently had about 19,000 open jobs, about 2½ times its usual total. Surging business accounts for many of those postings, with Kroger’s same-store sales in March having soared 30%. But new work practices -- related to the battle against coronavirus -- are nudging hiring curves even higher. 

“We now have more than 10,000 people in jobs dedicated to keeping our stores clean,” McMullen observes. New assignments include sanitizing carts multiple times a day, and wiping down the acrylic dividers that now separate customers and cashiers. 

As essential retail gains job-seekers’ interest, LinkedIn’s proprietary data yields insights about who’s getting hired in this sector, how labor trends vary in more than a dozen large metro areas -- and how eager (or hesitant) people may be about moving into this line of work. 

The analysis derives from a week-by-week analysis of job postings, job applications and candidates’ job views, as compiled and analyzed by LinkedIn’s Economic Graph team. By focusing on a rush of applications from March 2 through March 29, followed by some moderation in the two weeks ended April 12, it’s possible to see how activity changes as coronavirus cases surge, while restrictions on ordinary commerce increase. 

One striking trend is how many applicants for essential-retail openings have come from industries immobilized by this year’s shelter-in-place rules. LinkedIn data shows that 23.8% of applicants most recently worked in four such industries: retail, restaurants, hospitality and food/beverage.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in my lifetime,” Kroger’s McMullen says. “It’s incredibly humbling. When we do our virtual job fairs, we’re getting people who used to be hair stylists, who used to work in restaurants, or who used to work in small medical offices, where they’ve been told that their work isn’t essential. They need income.” 

In Dallas, preschool teacher Darby Griffin was out of work after her school closed March 9. She’s now working for Amazon, helping to manage new inventory. Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos cited her temporary job switch in his recent letter to shareholders, saying: “We’re happy to have Darby with us until she can return to the classroom.” 

LinkedIn data shows that between early and late March, job applications for essential retail surged 88% nationally, driven by the double escalation of Covid-19’s impact on the U.S. economy -- and shoppers’ desire to stockpile goods. That increase compares applications in the first week of the month (ended March 8), to the final week (ended March 29), when applications peaked nationally. Since then, applications have cooled off a bit.

The rise in applications has varied hugely across the United States. Metro areas such as Sacramento, Nashville, Miami, Atlanta and Phoenix saw applications rise more than 100% across March. Meanwhile, Dallas, Houston, Chicago, the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles saw applications rise a more moderate 50% to 100%. And in cities such as Detroit and New York, where overall hiring slumped especially severely in March, essential-retail applications rose less than 50%.

What’s behind these big disparities? Actual-retail job openings doesn’t appear to have varied nearly as much by city. Instead, it’s more likely that in some cities, factors such as weak overall labor markets or limited incidences of Covid-19 made essential retail look quite attractive, leading to high application rates.

By contrast, in cities with higher rates of Covid-19, such as New York and Detroit, job-seekers might have been more hesitant about pursuing new work involving even minor exposure to many other people.

Large companies offering essential-retail work have been boosting hourly pay or adding bonuses. In March, Amazon temporarily boosted minimum pay for its fulfillment center associates to $17 an hour, up from $15. CVS said it was giving workers at its drugstores cash bonuses as big as $500. Other companies announcing pay increases include Target, Kroger, Albertsons, Trader Joe’s and Texas’s H-E-B.  

For many independent contractors doing food deliveries, earnings are surging, too. D’Shea Grant, who delivers for Doordash in New York, says she is getting more orders and bigger tips from customers. With hand sanitizer in her car and a bandana over her mouth, she says, “I feel like I’m on the front lines. But people are so appreciative when they see us.” 

In Sacramento, Tyler Burch sees essential retail from a small-business perspective.   He’s the interim general manager at Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op, a sleek, full-service grocery store that employs about 245 people. 

The severity of the coronavirus situation registered only gradually, Burch recalls. In February, he began reading about Italy’s challenges keeping its grocery stores open when Covid-19 illnesses struck. “I thought: “What would happen here if we had to deal with this?” he remembers.

By March, that wasn’t an abstract question. As coronavirus cases surged in California, Burch and colleagues began reworking the store experience in a hurry. The cafe and a hot-food buffet were closed. So was the store’s cooking school. Even bulk-food bins were emptied out, replaced with small sealed envelopes of herbs, nuts, etc. 

All those changes were a blow to store culture, which dated back to the store’s beginnings in 1972 as a bulk-food cooperative. But there wasn’t any choice.

Idled workers in the cafe and cooking school were reassigned. Some helped implement curbside delivery for customers that didn’t want to step into the store; others managed the new lines outside the store, which enforced a 50-person cap on the number of shoppers inside the store at any moment.

Business both slowed -- and accelerated. Foot traffic dwindled, but the customers that did arrive were ravenous. Shoppers’ in-store average purchases nearly doubled, with binge buying that sometimes topped $400. In addition, customers’ use of grocery delivery services such as Instacart jumped nearly 10-fold, with many of those orders being especially large.

Burch for years had been telling store employees not to be upset if their neatly stacked displays were picked apart by customers. Still, 2020’s shopping sprees and the sight of empty shelves shocked him. “It meant we couldn’t offer as much to anyone the next day,” he explains.

Customer reaction to this year's drastic changes has varied widely, in ways that leave Burch marveling about human behavior. “I’ve had customers tell me: “Wow, you have potatoes!’” he says. “And I’ve had others get angry because we’re out of truffle oil.” 

"We're all living this differently,” Burch concludes. “And we're all processing our confusion differently."

(LinkedIn data scientist Jenny Ying contributed to this article.)