2025 Year-End Insights
The United States Retail and Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industries present two distinct work forces united by the pressure of shifting consumer behaviors and digital transformation. In the Retail sector, employment remains high, but it is characterized by immense churn, particularly around seasonal hiring and layoffs, with trends showing that the retention of seasonal employees has become less pronounced in recent holiday seasons compared to earlier years (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Trends in retail trade holiday employment buildups and layoffs"). Front-line retail jobs, such as Cashiers and Retail Salespersons, continue to have low median annual wages, creating a fundamental instability in the workforce. Conversely, the CPG sector is focusing its job growth on specialized, white-collar roles in supply chain, data science, and e-commerce, with occupations like Data Science projected to grow much faster than the average for all occupations, emphasizing the industry's investment in optimization and digital marketing (BLS projections cited by CSCMP/LinkedIn reports).
From an economic perspective, both industries are healthy in terms of overall consumption, but the financial risk has shifted. Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED) on Advance Real Retail and Food Services Sales indicates that consumer spending remains robust, though current consumer outlook suggests a tendency to cut back on discretionary spending due to price concerns (FRED via U.S. Census Bureau, "Advance Real Retail and Food Services Sales"). The CPG industry's economic strength is now fundamentally tied to its ability to manage supply chain complexity and data analytics, with significant corporate investment going toward resilient systems rather than simply maximizing floor space. For retail, the primary challenge is the structural shift to e-commerce, which is projected to constrain retail trade employment and shift labor demand toward warehousing and logistics, necessitating that retailers focus on leveraging technology to increase labor productivity .
A major force reshaping the corporate landscape is the ongoing series of large-scale corporate workforce reductions at major e-commerce and technology companies, which have led to thousands of job cuts in corporate, cloud, and engineering divisions globally.1 These decisions, often the largest in the history of the companies involved, are driven by a combination of factors: correcting the over-hiring that occurred during the pandemic-era digital boom, tightening corporate budgets due to economic pressures, and an aggressive strategic shift toward automation and generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) (NerdWallet, "Tech Layoffs in 2025"; The Economic Times, "1.2 million Americans laid off in 2025 as job cuts hit highest level since the COVID-19 pandemic").2 The loss of these high-paid corporate positions floods the market with highly skilled professionals, increasing competition for roles in adjacent industries and creating significant anxiety among surviving corporate staff that their functions may soon be automated.
Worker sentiment shared across social media platforms over the last 45 days highlights the intense financial and emotional pressure on the front-line workforce. Retail workers frequently discuss operating in a "fragile financial and career ecosystem" marked by stagnant pay, unpredictable schedules, and strained workplace relationships. For hourly employees, the lack of scheduling equity, where hours constantly fluctuate and lack transparency, is a major driver of turnover and low morale, often cited as a key reason for leaving ahead of compensation alone. In the corporate CPG world, the sentiment centers on job insecurity due to major layoffs, often attributed to over-hiring during the pandemic and the acceleration of AI adoption for corporate functions, forcing professionals to constantly upgrade skills to avoid being caught in a restructuring (PwC Holiday Outlook Survey).
To explore new opportunities, employees are successfully translating their high-touch customer skills and operational know-how into more stable, salaried positions. The most successful strategy for front-line retail workers is the pivot into Customer Success, Operations Coordination, or Account Management roles in other industries, such as tech or corporate services. This transition requires employees to reframe their retail experience, such as managing high-volume Black Friday crowds or inventory, as proof of project management, problem-solving, and conflict resolution skills (The Spice & Tea Exchange, "Career after Retail"). For managers and CPG corporate staff, the key is formalizing their knowledge: CPG professionals with supply chain experience successfully transition into Logistics and Procurement across industries by obtaining certifications like the Certified Supply Chain Professional (CSCP). Retail managers often find success by leveraging their team leadership experience to move into Learning & Development or Vendor Management roles, where their expertise in operational efficiency and training new staff provides a clear path out of store-level operations.