The Seattle Times had an interesting story last week about how online shopping is changing holiday hiring. The National Retail Federation estimates that 46.1 percent of holiday sales this year will be made online. Thus:

Amazon is expected to hire 25 percent more workers this holiday season than it did last year. About one out of seven of Nordstrom and Macy’s holiday hires will be working at their e-commerce fulfillment centers.

And, with relatively low unemployment rates, shipping companies such as United Parcel Service (UPS), FedEx and the U.S. Postal Service may have trouble filling all their holiday positions.

Additionally,

This is also the first holiday season where “we’re really seeing the whole idea of speedy delivery” — one-day or one-hour delivery, [John] Challenger [CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a global outplacement consultancy] said.

“We may be moving toward more Uber and Uber-economy-type drivers and employment in years to come. And that will further take a bite out of the need for in-store personnel.”

That is, more people may work on contract rather than as employees, and there may be more on-demand work. But there's been a lot of pushback on the Uber model. (See also this post about the changing nature of employment.)