As the Economy Worsens, Flint Michigan Retailers Suffer This Holiday Season

The state of the nation is poor. Jobs aren't easy to find and people who have jobs are taking cuts. As each incident happens, it's similar to a domino effect. As jobs decrease, so is the income of many Americans. As a result, holiday shopping sales this season rose a little more than 5% across the U.S.

Because of poor sales both this year and last, Michigan's retailer sales rose only 2% this year. A very disappointing number for many in retail. This comes to the state as the housing market continues to crumble with more than 7,000 properties listed in the greater Flint area alone. Not only that, credit is becoming tighter and gas prices are unstable.

"Our sales for the day after Thanksgiving were actually short about $20,000 as planned," says Dale Miller of JCPenney, in Flint, Michigan.

"It was consistantly busy as always. By the mid-day report we thought we were looking good," he continues.

"However, due to early door-busters running through the early afternoon, the traffic slowed slightly towards the end."

That was just the beginning.

"About three weeks into the shopping season, we had several great sales and door-busters but we noticed people just weren't buying as much as they have," Dale says.

"Christmas Eve was very busy. Last minute shoppers came in to get their gifts they needed, again they didn't buy as much as they have in the past."

The sales over the holiday period were disappointing to the manager of 25 years.

"We had to cut hours, and at Christmas time that should not be happening. We should have plenty of hours to spare."

Aside cutting hours at the busiest time of year, many of the longtime workers are not happy they had their hours cut while newer seasonal employees had more hours at times.

"We can't afford to keep very many associates after the new year starts, so we're giving them a chance to make some money before they go," he continued about the complaints.

"We haven't cut too drastically, but essentially these new workers will want to make a good impression and have a good work ethic. We can rehire them over and over for seasonal periods."

The assistant store manager will begin to cut people out by the second week of January. Several hour cuts have been made to employees that will not return.

"Normally we wait until almost February to let people go and give them a chance to prove themselves before we give them an application to be retained."

"Overall, our sales goals were just short for the entire season."