Retail recruiters are not experiencing any Christmas joy, despite bumper numbers of shoppers taking to the high-street this weekend.

A spokeswoman for the New West End Company, which represents London’s shopping district, told Metro that 2m shoppers took to the high street this weekend.

Chris Eastwood, director at Imagine Recruitment, told Recruiter, that retailers were not taking on more staff to cope with increased traffic in store. “The recruitment process is being elongated. Whereas it used to be two or three weeks, it is now six to eight weeks.”

Peter Burgess, director at Retail HR, adds: “The price cutting is probably more severe (or good) depending on your perspective. 

“There has already been significant retrenchment in the retail jobs market and this will continue.  Most estimates are that the industry will lose around 100,000 jobs during 2009.  We should expect some announcements on big redundancies early in the new year.”