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Don’t look to go to your local Target to get a jump on holiday shopping after your Thanksgiving dinner.
The company is closing all of its stores at 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving eve and won’t open them again until 6 a.m. on Black Friday.
Target stores started closing for Thanksgiving during the pandemic in 2020 and the company decided to make the closures permanent in 2023.
“There’s no substitute for the real thing, especially on a family-centered holiday like Thanksgiving. Which is why it’s goo to see other retailers coming around o the approach we’ve been following for years,” CEO Brian Cornell said last year.
The company previously said it was hiring 100,000 seasonal workers at its nearly 2,000 stores.
Walmart has also announced it will remain closed on Thanksgiving. It will be the fifth year in a row that the chain will close all of its stores.
Both companies will continue to allow customers to shop online during the holiday.
America’s shoppers are expected to make retailers’ days merry and bright this holiday season by “cautiously” increasing their spending over last year, according to the National Retail Federation.
The industry group forecast Tuesday that total sales in November and December would grow between 2.5% and 3.5%, compared to the same period in 2023. That means retailers could ring up $979.5 billion to $989 billion worth of purchases.
The holiday outlook matches the NRF’s earlier percentage forecast for the entire year, during which consumers are expected to spend between $5.23 trillion and $5.28 trillion. That’s up from $5.1 trillion in 2023.
