Big Firms:The Hiring Outlook

The Fortune 100 top companies are adding 65,000 jobs.Among them are Sears Holdings,parent of Sears and Kmart stores.They have 21,800 openings across the board,from executive to hourly positions.Lowe's,the home improvement retailer,needs 15,000 workers,many of them seasonal.Privately held New York Life is adding 3640 staff,especially sales and sales management positions.Bank of America seeks 3400 new hires for a broad assortment of assignments.
About 15 million Americans are looking for work,so the big firms won't even make a dent with their hiring.Still,it's better than layoffs and,historically,small firms have employed the bulk of the workforce.Most of the economic recovery is contingent upon small business,not the captains of industry.

Sears Holdings' Christmas Strategy

Sears Holdings got an early and shrewd start on the holiday shopping season.Noticing that many of its Sears stores were in malls that had lost KB Toys stores when that chain was liquidated,Sears decided to take up the slack and start selling toys itself at these malls.Since August 15,Sears has been selling toys at 20 locations in the Chicago,New York,Los Angeles and San Francisco areas.The Toy Shops are stocking private label toys such as My First Craftsman,My First Kenmore and Just Kidz,as well as Fisher Price,VTech,Hasbro,LeapFrog and Bakugan.Specialty brands Schylling,Gund Plush and Thomas Wooden Railway are also being sold at the Sears stores.