Retail store closures remain a significant part of the industry landscape in 2026. Coresight Research, as reported by Fast Company, tracked 3,321 actual and planned U.S. store closures through early July and projects as many as 8,228 by year-end. That’s below the 9,197 recorded in 2025, but it still represents a substantial reshaping of the retail footprint.
Closures can result from bankruptcy or financial pressure, but they can also reflect portfolio optimization, changing consumer behavior, shifting labor investments and strategic reinvestment elsewhere in the business. For CHROs and HR leaders, that distinction matters.
A store closure, while often viewed as a separation event, should first be viewed as a workforce strategy decision. Some employees may be needed elsewhere in the organization. Others may require relocation support. And when continued employment isn’t possible, employees need a thoughtful transition into whatever comes next.
Getting those decisions right can protect valuable talent, maintain business continuity, support affected employees, and demonstrate to the remaining workforce what the organization values.
Store Closures Don’t Necessarily Mean the Retailer Is Retreating
One of the misconceptions surrounding store closures is that fewer locations automatically mean a business is shrinking everywhere. Retail transformation is rarely that simple.
Macy’s Closes Stores While Investing Elsewhere
Macy’s confirmed in January 2025 that it was closing 66 stores as part of a broader plan to close approximately 150 underproductive locations over three years. At the same time, the company has been investing in roughly 350 continuing Macy’s stores, along with customer experience, luxury and supply chain capabilities.
The workforce implication is important: a company can reduce its physical footprint while investing in its future. HR leaders should understand where new capabilities, labor and talent will be needed as other jobs disappear.
Target’s Workforce Investment Can Shift Within the Same Organization
Target’s multiyear business transformation, described in its 2025 annual report, spans organizational structure, processes, and technology, including a headquarters workforce reduction.
In early 2026, Retail Dive reported that Target eliminated approximately 500 district-level and supply-chain roles while significantly increasing investment in store labor and hours.
Reduction in one part of the organization and investment in another should change the workforce-planning conversation.
Before asking, “How do we separate these employees?” HR leaders should ask, “Which of these employees do we still need?”
Think of Affected Employees as a Talent Pool Before Treating Them as a Separation Population
Retailers spend considerable money on recruiting, hiring, onboarding and developing employees. It makes little sense to automatically release proven talent from one part of the organization while simultaneously recruiting people somewhere else.
Before a closure, HR leaders should assess the affected workforce against opportunities across the enterprise.
- Could a high-performing store manager lead another location?
- Could an associate move to another nearby store?
- Could employees transition into fulfillment, distribution, customer service, e-commerce or other growing functions?
- Could a critical employee relocate to another market?
Rather than concerns about whether an employee can take on an identical job elsewhere, the organization must consider if it has talent it can redeploy against another business need.
That’s why a strong retail workforce transition should follow three steps.
Step 1: Redeploy
Identify employees whose skills and performance make them strong candidates for roles elsewhere in the organization. Look beyond identical titles and locations. Skills developed in retail operations can transfer into numerous functions. For those with budding talent, leadership development programs like HighIMPACT HiPo may be useful to invest in so that your changing workforce is well supported during this transition.
Step 2: Relocate
When another opportunity exists but geography gets in the way, determine whether relocation makes sense for both the employee and organization.
Relocation won’t be appropriate for every role or employee, but for key talent, the economics of retaining an experienced employee may compare favorably with losing that person and recruiting a replacement somewhere else.
Step 3: Transition
When continued employment isn’t possible, provide meaningful career transition and outplacement support that helps the employee identify and pursue the next opportunity.
Macy’s 2026 company update describes offering employees affected by store changes transfer opportunities where available, along with severance and outplacement resources where applicable. This example shows the important principle isn’t the policy of any single retailer. Instead, focusing on opportunities where retention is possible may provide better outcomes.
Retail Store Closures Create a Different Outplacement Challenge
A corporate restructuring may affect employees across departments and geographies. A store closure can put dozens—or potentially hundreds—of people into the same local labor market at essentially the same time, creating a different transition challenges such as:
- Multiple employees may pursue the same nearby openings
- Comparable retail jobs may not exist in the immediate area
- Transportation and commute radius can limit opportunities for hourly workers
- Employees may have skills that transfer outside retail without realizing it
- Hourly associates and salaried managers can require very different career strategies
And if a closure requires relocation support, the needs of employees who remain with the company will be different from those leaving it. This is why there really isn’t one national retail workforce transition. A retailer closing 50 locations is managing 50 local labor-market events.
For instance, a closure in a large metropolitan area can create very different career options than a closure in a smaller community where comparable employers and positions are limited. Effective retail outplacement, therefore, needs two things that can appear contradictory:
Consistency at scale and personalization at the local level.
Employees should receive a consistent level of support regardless of location while their job-search strategy reflects the actual opportunities available where they live.
The Store Still Has to Operate After the Closure Is Announced
An often overlooked challenge that may occur when workforce transition planning may involve the fact that the doors usually don’t close the day the announcement is made. The business may still need to operate for weeks or months following the changes.
Customers still need assistance. Inventory still needs to be managed. Schedules still need to be filled. Security and loss-prevention procedures still matter. Service standards still matter.
But employees now know their jobs are ending.
Some will immediately begin searching for work. Some may leave before the final day. Others may disengage. Managers may struggle to maintain morale while dealing with their own uncertainty.
That turns workforce transition into a business-continuity issue, not simply an HR issue.
Retailers need to consider what support employees need after the announcement and what the business needs from employees through the final day of operations. Those objectives don’t have to conflict.
Employees who believe they’re being treated fairly and given meaningful support have a clearer reason to remain engaged through the transition.
Who Supports the Manager Who Has to Close the Store?
Store managers occupy an especially difficult position during a closure. Consider what the organization may be asking of them when this occurs.
A manager may have just learned that their own position is disappearing, yet that same person may be expected to communicate with employees, answer questions, manage emotions, maintain staffing, serve customers, protect operating standards, and keep the store functioning through its final day.
That’s an extraordinary leadership assignment.
Who prepares the manager for that conversation? And who supports the manager afterward?
Manager preparation should, therefore, be part of the closure plan, not an afterthought.
Managers need clarity about what they can and cannot communicate. They need answers to predictable employee questions. They need escalation resources for questions they can’t answer. And they need support navigating their own career transition.
The quality of the employee experience will often be determined less by the corporate announcement than by the conversations employees have with the manager standing in front of them.
Retail Employees Often Underestimate the Value of Their Own Experience
One of the most important roles career coaching can play is helping employees recognize what they actually know how to do.
Retail employees build highly transferable capabilities in customer experience, sales, team leadership, inventory management, scheduling, operations, loss prevention, training, merchandising, problem-solving, and performance management.
Consider the experienced store manager who describes themselves simply as a “retail manager.” That description can dramatically undersell the job.
That person may have managed a multimillion-dollar operation, led dozens of employees, hired and developed talent, managed labor budgets, handled inventory, solved customer problems, monitored sales performance and operated against demanding business metrics.
The career opportunity isn’t necessarily: “Where can I find another store manager job?” but may be “Where else are these capabilities valuable?”
Career coaching can help employees translate retail experience into language employers in adjacent industries recognize and expand the range of opportunities they consider.
The Employee Experience Creates a “Trust Radius”
The experience of a store closure affects more than employees directly losing their jobs. For instance, employees at neighboring locations, customers, job candidates, and the local community are all affected as the news radiates outward. That creates what HR leaders might think of as a trust radius around the closure.
Former employees talk about their experience on LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and other employer-review sites. They talk with coworkers, friends, family and customers. Remaining employees may be paying even closer attention, asking questions like:
- Is my store next?
- Why were those locations selected?
- Will my workload change?
- How secure is my position?
- What happens to me if our location closes?
- Will the company support me the way it supported those employees?
The way an organization treats departing employees provides visible evidence of what the company values. Employees who are staying don’t have to speculate about what the company would do to them. They just watched what the company did for someone else.
That’s why workforce transition becomes an employer-brand moment.
Retail’s Seasonal Workforce Adds Another Layer of Complexity
Retail employment already operates on an unusually dynamic cycle. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, five major retail categories added approximately 492,000 employees during the 2024 holiday buildup and then shed approximately 463,000 positions in January and February 2025, a net gain of only 29,000 for the season. That level of normal workforce movement can make structural changes harder for employees to interpret.
For HR leaders, it reinforces the need to clearly distinguish routine seasonal staffing changes from permanent changes to the organization’s footprint—and to communicate what each means for employees.
Don’t Just Offer Outplacement. Measure the Transition.
Companies measure candidate experience, employee engagement, turnover, retention, and time-to-fill. Retailers going through significant workforce changes should also consider how they measure the transition experience.
Useful questions could include:
- What percentage of affected employees were successfully redeployed?
- How many employees accepted relocation opportunities?
- What percentage engaged with available outplacement services?
- How quickly did participating employees move into new roles?
- Did critical managers and employees remain through planned closure dates?
- What happened to voluntary turnover in surrounding locations?
- How did employees evaluate the clarity and quality of communication?
These measures change the conversation.
Outplacement stops being something the organization simply offers and becomes part of an outcome the organization actively manages.
Seven Questions Retail CHROs Should Ask Before Announcing Store Closures
- Which employees do we want to keep? Identify high performers and critical talent before beginning the separation process.
- Where else in the organization could their skills create value? Look beyond identical jobs and consider stores, distribution, fulfillment, customer service, e-commerce and other functions.
- What does each local labor market look like? Understand the actual opportunities employees will encounter outside the organization.
- Which employees might be candidates for relocation? Compare the cost and value of retaining proven talent with recruiting and developing replacements elsewhere.
- Are our managers prepared to lead through the closure? Give them the communication, resources, and coaching necessary to support employees while keeping the business operating.
- What career support will different employee populations need? Hourly associates, store managers, district leaders, corporate staff, and supply chain employees shouldn’t automatically receive identical transition strategies.
- What will employees who stay conclude from what they see? Make sure the transition experience reinforces the employee value proposition the organization communicates everywhere else.
The Best Retail Workforce Transition Strategy Starts Before the Store Closes
A well-managed store closure, rather than one that is completely painless, is a realistic objective for the HR team tasked with it. Modern outplacement can include one-on-one career coaching, transferable-skills identification, resume and LinkedIn positioning, job-search strategy, interview preparation, career exploration, and support navigating adjacent industries.
For retailers managing closures across multiple markets, the objective should be to deliver a consistent standard of support while recognizing that every employee—and every local labor market—is different.
The Doors May Close, but the Relationship With Your Employer Brand Doesn’t
Retail footprints will continue to change as companies respond to consumer behavior, profitability pressure, technology, and evolving business models.
The best retail workforce-transition strategy begins by asking:
- Who can we keep?
- Who could succeed somewhere else in our organization?
- Who could relocate?
- And for those who need to leave, how can we genuinely help them move forward?
When employees, managers and communities are watching closely, it’s one of the clearest opportunities an organization has to demonstrate what its values actually mean.
Closing locations or restructuring your retail workforce? Give affected employees personalized career support while identifying opportunities to retain and redeploy valuable talent. Contact IMPACT Group to discuss a workforce transition and outplacement strategy built for the realities of retail.
