At the Lowe's store at the Waterfront, a cluster of self-checkout machines has replaced several human-manned cashier aisles that once occupied the center of the store. Such technological innovations are expected to keep this season's retail hiring flat or slightly below last year -- despite predictions for a strong retail season.

That's bad news for college students and others hoping to earn a little extra cash for the holiday season. "It's nothing drastic or dramatic," there just won't be as many seasonal retail openings as in past years, said Ed Bentley, a Dayton, Ohio-based consumer business analyst for Deloitte & Touche.

A big reason is labor-saving technology, he said, which in addition to self-checkout counters includes kiosks where shoppers can check prices, hand-held scanners that register prices while shopping rather than at the checkout aisle, and merchandise that is shipped pre-tagged and ticketed.

While none of these technologies is brand new, they increasingly are gaining widespread acceptance. Home Depot, for example, piloted self-checkout aisles in 2003 and intends to have them in all stores by the end of this year.

While self-checkout aisles are most prevalent in grocery stores, Mr. Bentley noted that they are moving into some discount department stores as well.

But even those chains that don't use self-checkout aisles, such as Macy's, are holding the line on holiday hires. Macy's expects hiring for this year to be "very consistent with last year," said Nathan Shore, a company spokesman.

Macy's started its worker recruitment in mid-October, he said, and expects to have sales associates and seasonal stockers working in stores by mid-November.

The National Retail Federation predicts that holiday sales will increase 5 percent this year, with department stores doing particularly well.

Nationally, retail employment in September was down about half a percentage point compared with last year, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The seven-county Pittsburgh region bucked the trend, with September retail trade employment up a percentage point from last year.