Forget the supply chain ruining Christmas. Companies are prepping for a blowout holiday season.

• Companies plan to hire 939,300 seasonal workers for the holidays, according to outplacement firm Challenger Gray & Christmas.
• That's a record. It would be 11% more than last year and the most in the dataset going back to 2012.

The supply-chain crisis will ruin the holiday season, according to some really smart people. But companies are preparing for a completely different Thanksgiving-Christmas-Hanukkah gauntlet: a blowout shopping binge.

US retailers, warehousing businesses, and transportation companies plan to hire 939,300 seasonal workers to handle holiday demand, outplacement and business coaching firm Challenger Gray & Christmas said in a report published Thursday. That would be a record. It's up 11% from last year's count and the most planned hires since the company began tracking the data in 2012.

The report paints an encouraging picture for the ever-critical holiday season. Supply shortages and shipping bottlenecks continue to plague the US recovery. Online out-of-stock warnings are nearly triple the pre-crisis trend, and prices continue to climb at the fastest pace in more than a decade.

The mix of high inflation and supply issues threatened to sap a key driver of the recovery. Consumer spending counts for roughly 70% of economic activity, and the holidays see Americans spend hundreds of billions of dollars. A spending surge would see the economy rebound faster and Americans return to pre-pandemic life sooner. The alternative is a malaise.

Experts also expect the supply-chain pressures to ease soon. It's likely the US is "past the peak pinch," Jefferies economists led by Aneta Markowska said in a note published October 15, while one of the world's major warehousing CEOs just called a peak this week. Improvements likely began in mid-October and will continue into 2022, the Jefferies team added.

The pace of holiday season hiring, though, is already behind the trends seen over the last two years, according to data from jobs website Indeed. The share of seasonal postings that are "hiring urgently" has also ballooned to 7.2%, as of November 1, from last year's reading of o.6%.

As seen in the following chart with data provided by Indeed, the share of seasonal job postings per million as of November 1 is 29% below the share of seasonal job postings per million in 2020. It's also down 26% from 2019.

The historic labor shortage gripping the country might also crimp hiring. The share of job-seekers looking for seasonal work is down 19% from the year-ago level and 35% compared to 2019, Indeed said. Interest in seasonal jobs is "sluggish," and could leave companies flat-footed as shopping booms, AnnElizabeth Konkel, an economist at Indeed, told Insider.

"Early November is peak holiday hiring season, so for employers struggling to hire right now, it looks like there's little relief in sight," she added in an email.

The holidays will look more like 2019 than 2020

Data from Indeed shows companies expecting a return to pre-crisis shopping trends.

Hopes for a more normal holiday season were quashed last year. Virus cases surged higher through the fourth quarter of 2020, forcing governments to reinstate some restrictions. Since vaccines weren't yet approved, the risk of shopping at physical retailers was far greater.

The situation is vastly different this year. Most Americans are fully vaccinated, and the Delta wave has been fading since mid-September. The economy is also more open than it was a year ago.

Companies are hiring as such. The mix of seasonal openings looks "similar" to that seen before the health crisis, according to Indeed. Firms are hiring more in customer service and sales roles than in 2020. Loading and stocking jobs have fallen from 10% of total openings to about 4%, hinting at less demand for online shopping.

The supply chain issue has defined the recovery through the last few months. But as the holidays approach, companies are betting on the US to look much more like 2019 than 2021.