Three American retailers that approached recruitment specialist Suzanne Sears about expanding into Canada in July have since postponed their plans, offering a glimpse of how trade uncertainty is influencing investment decisions before new stores are announced.
Sears, president of Best Retail Careers International, says retailers are also limiting seasonal recruitment and taking longer to fill positions. Her observations come as Statistics Canada reports that employment in wholesale and retail trade fell by 29,000 in October, leaving the combined sector with 113,000 fewer workers than a year earlier.
“I had 3 key American retailers reach out to expand into Canada in July,” Sears wrote in a November 8 email to Retail Insider. “All 3 subsequently declined to move into Canada once tariff resolution was off the table.”
Sears said the companies characterized their decisions as delays, not permanent withdrawals. She did not identify the retailers, disclose their proposed store counts or markets, or indicate whether they had reached the leasing stage.
For Canadian landlords and brokers, a deferred market entry can mean fewer immediate prospects for new space. The potential consequences also extend to construction, suppliers and store-level recruitment, although Sears did not provide evidence that any of those commitments had been made by the three companies.
Sears traces a broader change in recruitment sentiment to July, when she says uncertainty over Canada-U.S. trade negotiations began weighing more heavily on retailers’ plans. She described employers concentrating on initiatives already underway while holding back on additional commitments.
Holiday Recruitment Appears Subdued
Sears believes many retailers are entering the holiday season without the substantial temporary hiring campaigns she has encountered in previous years. She says employers appear to be relying more heavily on existing teams and online sales, potentially leaving stores with less staffing flexibility during busy periods.
As an illustration, she estimated that an Indeed search for seasonal retail positions in the Hamilton area showed roughly 50 to 75 active postings when she checked in November. In previous years, she said, individual clients sometimes asked her to recruit 25 to 50 seasonal workers each.
The figures are not directly comparable. Her Hamilton estimate covers one platform at one point in time, has not been independently replicated and cannot establish how much seasonal hiring has changed across Canada.
“It speaks to what myself and my colleagues in the industry have observed: no seasonal hiring campaigns of any note,” Sears wrote. Her concern is that retailers could underestimate the customer-service demands of holiday shopping, particularly in categories where product advice is central to the sale.
Hiring Decisions Stretch Out
Employers are also taking longer to complete recruitment, according to Sears. She estimates that hiring processes in her own work are taking approximately 60 to 75 days, an observation that should not be mistaken for a national average.
“So mostly the answer is: slower hiring, jobs open longer,” she wrote in her follow-up response. That experience suggests employers may be delaying decisions even where vacancies remain, although it does not establish the causes of the national employment decline.
Statistics Canada’s October Labour Force Survey provides separate evidence of a difficult job market. Among people unemployed in September, 18.9% had found work by October, compared with 19.8% a year earlier and an average of 24.6% for the corresponding months of 2017 to 2019.
The agency reported a layoff rate of 0.7%, virtually unchanged from 0.6% a year earlier. The job-finding and layoff measures cover the broader economy, not retail alone, and do not measure the length of individual employers’ recruitment processes.
Productivity and Customer Service
Sears also sees retailers trying to operate more efficiently with existing staff. She cited Aritzia as a company other retailers admire for its productivity, while questioning whether its approach can be reproduced in businesses requiring more intensive customer assistance.
“Everyone wants to copy the Aritizia formula. Make more with less,” she wrote, misspelling the company’s name in the original message. Her assessment is qualitative; it does not establish comparable staffing or productivity figures for Aritzia and its competitors.
Sears argues that knowledgeable sales associates remain valuable, particularly when customers need advice on more complicated purchases. She is skeptical that online tools and artificial intelligence can consistently substitute for that service, although their effectiveness varies by retailer and application.
Employment Weakness Extends Beyond Stores
Statistics Canada’s November 6 release shows the combined wholesale and retail trade industry lost 29,000 employed people in October, a monthly decline of 1.0%. Employment was down 113,000, or 3.7%, from October 2025, with year-over-year declines concentrated in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia.
Across Canada, employment was little changed in October, falling by 4,700, while the unemployment rate increased to 6.7%. Youth unemployment reached 13.7%, the private sector lost 53,000 employees and public-sector employment rose by 50,000.
The Labour Force Survey combines wholesale and retail trade, so its figures cannot be presented as losses in retail stores alone. Nor does a decline in employment establish that an equivalent number of people were laid off; departures, reduced hiring and other changes can affect the total.
Retail Insider previously covered the October figures in Mario Toneguzzi’s employment report. The new evidence from Sears concerns decisions that may not yet be visible in store-opening announcements or headline employment data.
Despite the present caution, Sears expects recruitment and expansion interest could improve in spring 2027 if trade uncertainty eases. “Expect retail will take off like a rocket with easement of tariff trade war worries,” she wrote.
