Job seekers caught in retail crunch as they try to get a foot in the door

The retail crunch that accompanied this recession like a warmed-over side dish is harming more than corporate profits and the stock market.

It also stole an employment safety net that the laid off and newly graduated have relied on for decades to provide work and a paycheck even when times were tough.

With 600,000 retail jobs gone nationally over the past year — 10 percent of the 6 million nonfarm jobs that disappeared — and people holding on to their jobs more dearly than they used to, the market for even entry-level retail jobs is tight.

Just ask Sports Authority, which has interviewed hundreds of candidates this week for about 110 jobs at soon-to-open stores near Northgate Mall and in Lake Stevens.

It is moving into former Joe's sports stores there, and some of the people showing up for drop-in interviews this week used to work at those stores.

One applicant on Thursday morning was Exodus Navasca, 24, who lost his job as a Joe's cashier in May and has had no luck finding another job despite applying for several dozen openings.

"I've even gone as far as Redmond," he said after interviewing in a fourth-floor conference room at Hotel Nexus near Northgate. He also has gone back to school at Shoreline Community College.

In King County, retail employment has dwindled by 6,400 jobs over the past year to 108,300 positions in August, according to preliminary figures from the Washington State Employment Security Department.

"It's definitely an employer's market," said Mona Hararah, Sports Authority's manager of human resources for six Western states, including Washington.

"Real estate is the biggest field we're seeing candidates from now," she said, but many applicants have experience at Microsoft, Boeing and mortgage companies.

On Thursday, Sean Halter was among dozens who showed up to interview.

Halter, 40, has decades of experience managing stores for Big 5 Sporting Goods and overseeing about 400 people at a firm that did contract work for Home Depot. The contract work is dwindling, and while Halter said he enjoyed the shorter hours this summer, he wants a full-time job.

He worries that his résumé is off-putting for people hiring ground-level workers.

"When they see 'vice president of retail operations,' they assume I want to make $125,000. But I don't need to make that," Halter said. "I trust that once I get my foot in the door, I'm going to outperform" and be promoted.

His drop-in interview led to an appointment with a Sports Authority's district manager.

Esther Bickford, 21, also did well on Thursday, after showing a résumé that includes a University of Washington bachelor's degree in communication and psychology and experience with Big 5 Sporting Goods.

A graduate student in psychology, she said it has been hard to find a part-time retail job.

"I always expected that after I graduated from college, it wouldn't be hard at all" to find a job, she said. "It's hard watching the money go away."

Dan Bernard, business-services manager at WorkSource Seattle-King County, said he sees a general cautiousness about hiring among local retailers.

"This is the time of year when they start gearing up for the holidays, and the activity has certainly been less this year," Bernard said. "The general feeling is that they're wanting to wait and see."

Federal Express, which always hires seasonal drivers, is looking for "on-call" drivers this year, Bernard said, indicating that it is uncertain how many packages it will have to deliver.

Last year, King County retailers hired about 3,000 extra workers for the holidays, roughly half the number they usually do, said Desiree Phair, regional labor economist following King County for the Washington State Employment Security Department.

"We're curious to see what will happen with holiday hiring, but we're not sure where it's going to go," she said.

— Melissa Allison

Tidbits

Western Snohomish County has the lowest retail-vacancy rate, 4.2 percent, of six submarkets in the Puget Sound region, according to a new report by Marcus & Millichap. It's followed by the Northgate/Central area, at 4.5 percent; Southwest/Puyallup, 5.2 percent; Eastside/Bellevue, 6.2 percent; West Seattle/Tukwila/Kent/Auburn, 7.8 percent; and South-Central Tacoma, 9.6 percent. Regionwide, asking rents dropped 2.6 percent in the past year to $22.54 a square foot in the second quarter, while actual rents fell 4.7 percent to $20.03 a square foot. — AM

QFC will close its store at NW 85th Street and 15th Avenue NW on Oct. 17 to make way for a Value Village, scheduled to open in January, said Fred Wolfstone, who owns the Crown Hill property. The roughly 40 people who work at that QFC are being offered jobs at other stores, and QFC plans to open a new store at NW 57th Street and 24th Ave NW — the site of its old Ballard store — in December or January, said spokeswoman Kristin Maas. — MA

Bravern developer Schnitzer West said it raised more than $46,000 for three charities — Bellevue Schools Foundation, Dress for Success Seattle and Washington Women in Need — at the shopping center's Sept. 12 opening. All told, The Bravern's opening events, which included a Neiman Marcus gala and preview dinners at John Howie Steak, raised more than $345,000 for area nonprofits and social-service charities, according to Schnitzer West. — AM

Meanwhile, Kemper Development said it raised about $44,000 at its fourth-annual Fashion Week for the Boys & Girls clubs of Bellevue. — AM

So how is the Puget Sound region's newest shopping center doing? At a local gathering Wednesday sponsored by the International Council of Shopping Centers, Schnitzer West senior investment manager Mark Netherland said a couple of The Bravern's retailers hit their total sales projections for the remaining 18 days of September in the first week. Still, it's too soon to call it a "home run in terms of sales," he said, citing the tough economy.

The Bravern opened with two dozen of its 35 retail spaces filled, and the most noticeable "gaps" in the tenant roster, Netherland said, are a coffee purveyor, children's boutique and "grab-and-go" restaurant, for "the shopper who doesn't want to take an hour to sit down and eat." Initially, some coffee purveyors were concerned that Microsoft workers who take up The Bravern's two office towers would not come down to the shopping center for their caffeine fix, especially since the software giant provides Starbucks drip coffee for free, Netherland said.

Now, "I think there's plenty of retail traffic even if they don't come down, and we're finding that quite a bit of Microsoft workers are coming down to the restaurants," he said. — AM

Retail Report appears Fridays. Amy Martinez covers goods, services and online retail. She can be reached at 206-464-2923 or amartinez@seattletimes.com. Melissa Allison covers the food and beverage industry. She can be reached at 206-464-3312 or mallison@seattletimes.com.