A few days ago, Paula Reid, an executive coach and president of the talent search firm Reid & Co., asked a top retail executive whether he was happy in his current role.
His response: “This feels like a safe place to hide out during this moment of uncertainty,” Reid recalled.
For Reid, his comment spoke to a collective malaise that has taken hold in the retail industry. Employees are unwilling to take risks with their careers, and equally cautious employers are content for their corporate staff to tread water.
The retail labour market is remarkably stable in the US. While some companies, including Estée Lauder and Nike, have announced layoffs, unemployment in the sector stood at 4.4 percent in July, lower than at the same time last year. But though companies aren’t cutting their workforces, they aren’t doing much hiring either. The overall economy added a net 106,000 jobs between May and July, by far the slowest three-month stretch since the pandemic. Taken together, the data speaks to a kind of economic purgatory for companies and workers.
At its best, fashion’s current holding pattern can be read as a natural correction — a reset after years of churn ranging from creative director roles at big European conglomerates to over-hiring and inflated compensation packages at the corporate level immediately after the pandemic, to the rapid team expansion in beauty as the sector surged.
At its worst, stagnation — driven by tariff pressures, economic uncertainty, geopolitical tensions and even fears about AI’s impact on work — risks stifling innovation and choking the flow of talent when the industry can least afford it. How brands and employees respond now could shape fashion’s growth, creativity and ability to attract top performers for years to come.
But unpredictability doesn’t have to mean paralysis.
“There’s not a lot of mobility … and hiring plans seem a bit more defensive than [focused] around innovation, ” said Lauren Lotka, founder and CEO of talent agency and consultancy Lotka & Co. “But … we can only sit tight for so long. The market doesn’t reward us for that.”
Change at the Top
One reason there’s so little movement now is because there was so much movement before. The immediate aftermath of the pandemic brought almost unprecedented turnover in retail — at the start of 2023, The Gap, VF Corp, The RealReal and Kohl’s were all simultaneously without CEOs. In luxury, Dior, Celine and Chanel all named new creative directors in the past year.
Some fashion firms stand to benefit by keeping leaders in place long enough for strategies to take root, said Lisa Yae, managing partner of the retail and luxury goods practice at CAA Executive Search.
“There was a moment from 2020 to ’22 where people were moving at the very senior level in 12- and 16-month turns, and you start to question, ‘how much are you really able to accomplish in that time period?’” she said.
Traditionally, a new leader’s first year is for assessing and learning the business, the second for implementing strategy, and the third for iteration. The most challenging work often comes in years four and five — figuring out what’s working, what’s not, and adapting. Many leaders were exiting before they could show they’re worth their salt, Yae said.
Below the C-suite, the opposite can be true: volatility sometimes opens doors. For talent at the director or VP level, where bottlenecks often stall mobility, disruption can be prime time to leap — whether by moving to another brand or advancing internally under leaders willing to make space for their growth.
“Anytime you have upheaval like that, there’s also opportunity,” Reid said. “It creates the chance to reinvent yourself … or to see clearly where the weaknesses in your business are and use it as an opportunity to shore up or restructure.”
How to Make the Uncertainty Work for You
In the near term, sources of uncertainty — from tariffs (companies from Crocs to Claire’s have recently taken sizable revenue hits due to the Trump administration’s new duties, with the latter filing bankruptcy) to AI and broader economic volatility — aren’t likely to go away. For some, staying put makes sense. But there are also pockets of opportunity.
In the months ahead, fashion retailers are likely to ramp up hiring — first for the holiday season and temporary roles, then more meaningfully as 2026 budgets open (though this could also coincide with some layoffs or exits). Experts say retail talent with customer service and merchandising backgrounds is increasingly in demand in adjacent sectors like hospitality, sports and entertainment.
“There’s real interest in that consumer-luxury background in certain sectors,” Yae said. “You have a lot of industries [like sports] trying to create or increase revenue streams in product and merchandise categories.”
For talent feeling restless or worried about stagnation (even if the broader job market is), the smartest moves are measured ones — grounded in research about where the next big opportunities actually are, Yae said.
“For any candidate that has historically been within a fashion organisation and is really struggling to see how they could make a move into another sector, [I say] ‘get curious or go crazy,’” Lotka said.
If candidates make it to the interview stage in this climate, they should be prepared to ask the questions that reveal whether they’re joining a sinking ship or one ready to thrive on the high seas.
“As a job seeker, you have to be an educated consumer,” Reid said. “You need to ask the questions of a leader that you’re going to work for, like ‘how are you navigating the headwinds? What are the biggest challenges? What is your plan?’”