Retail hiring for the holiday shopping season was expected to be slow, and now we have the data to confirm it. According to data from Bureau of Labor Statistics (supplied to BloggingStocks by Challenger, Gray & Christmas), the retail sector added only 63,500 jobs in October -- in data that appropriately was not seasonally adjusted.

This is only slightly better than the 59,100 retail jobs added in October 2008. In the fourth quarter of last year, retail employment increased by a mere 384,300 jobs, with the retail industry turning in its worst holiday shopping season employment stats since 1989 (when it added 380,500 workers).

Layoff announcements hit their lowest level since March 2008 last month, signaling market stabilization. Global outplacement consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. put the number of cuts at 66,404 for September, a 13% decline from July's 76,456. Year-over-year, the number of layoffs announced is down 30%, and September was the fourth month in a row in which job cuts fell relative to the same month a year earlier.

Planned job cuts reached 240,233 for the third quarter of 2009, according to Challenger, its lowest level since the first quarter of 2008, when there were 200,656 planned layoffs. For the third quarter of this year, job cuts fell 24.5% from the previous quarter's 318,165, and it's off 16.3% from 287,142 in the third quarter of 2009. At the beginning of 2009, the planned layoff rate reached a seven-year high of 578,510. Since then, the planned layoff rate fell 58.5%.

Retailer Macy's (NYSE: M) first fiscal quarter wasn't that bad, at least in terms of the analyst game. The company, which competes with mall colleagues such as J.C. Penney (NYSE: JCP) and Sears (NASDAQ: SHLD), reported net income of 2 cents per diluted share from continuing operations. The denizens of Wall Street thought the company would lose 2 cents, so management came ahead in this regard by four pennies. Bravo!

However, does this news excite me? Not necessarily. Macy's needs a little help in its sales department. First, the overall top line declined almost 3%, coming in at $5.7 billion. Second, and perhaps even more telling, same-store sales were weak during the quarter, decreasing by 2.6%. And then there's the issue of cash flow. Operational cash flow from continuing operations was excellent compared with last year's quarter since $21 million was generated this time around as opposed to $370 million being used last time around. Nevertheless, when you take into account capital spending, no free cash flow was left over in the first quarter. And cash has been decreasing on the balance sheet. Oh, and gross margin went down, too.

I wasn't too taken by Macy's current earnings report, and I'm not putting the company on my list of investment ideas right now, even though the stock closed up yesterday on the news (heck, the company didn't repurchase any shares last quarter and stated that it didn't see any more share repurchases coming for the rest of the year, so apparently the stock isn't on management's ideas list, either). I think there might be better retail investments out there, such as Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) or Target (NYSE: TGT). Yes, the retailer may have strong associations with Donald Trump and Martha Stewart, but I will not be blinded by such celebrity value.

Disclosure: I don't own shares in any company mentioned here; positions can change at any time.