The peak shipping season hit warehouses three months early this year. Now operations managers are scrambling to count the merchandise they raced to import before tariff changes kicked in, and the labor they’re relying on to do it may not exist.
According to the National Retail Federation’s latest Global Port Tracker data, retailers brought merchandise forward aggressively in May, June, and July, making those three months the highest import volumes of 2026.
What looked like sound supply chain strategy at the time has become an operational nightmare for distribution centers, retail warehouses, and fulfillment facilities across North America. The math is unforgiving: you can store inventory anywhere for any length of time, but you can’t count it without people.
The NRF reported that the early peak season left retailers well stocked heading into August. A new round of 10% to 12.5% Section 301 tariffs on forced labor took effect on July 24, replacing a temporary 10% tariff that had expired the day before. Yet that stockpile requires verification, reconciliation, and cycle counts before peak selling season arrives. The timing makes that work harder to execute, not easier.
The Week When Everything Changed
Retailers had been expecting tariff volatility since late 2024, when the Trump administration began signaling new trade measures. By spring 2026, the pattern had become familiar enough to plan around. The Section 122 tariffs that started in February gave importers five months to adjust. The real crunch came in July, when the 10% Section 301 tariffs regarding forced labor covering 60 economies and affecting 99% of U.S. imports took effect.
For supply chain professionals, that deadline triggered a race that peaked right on schedule. Container volumes flooded ports in May and June. U.S. ports handled 2.23 million Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units in June alone, up 13.2% from a year earlier. Retailers who had delayed their purchases now faced a narrow window to move merchandise ahead of the new tariff rates.
But early imports create a cascade of problems that don’t resolve when the shipment arrives. The merchandise needs to be received, checked against purchase orders, reconciled in inventory systems, placed in the right location, and cycle-counted before it can be sold. When you compress months of imports into weeks, you compress all of that work into the same window.
Where the Inventory Sits
According to the NRF’s forecasts, ports expect import volumes to total 2.16 million TEU in September and 2.13 million TEU in October. This represents a substantial pullback from the July peak but still above historical averages for those months. More importantly, the inventory imported in May, June, and July remains in the system, waiting to move. It’s sitting in receiving areas designed to turn inventory in days, not weeks. It’s occupying shelf space that ought to be reserved for back-to-school merchandise, Halloween stock, and holiday items.
The result is a warehouse operator’s worst-case scenario. The facility sits over-capacity with merchandise that needs to be moved, while the receiving dock is backed up with new shipments arriving on schedule. Cycle counting and physical inventory checks fall behind. Phantom inventory problems emerge. And all of this happens during September, when distribution centers are already preparing for the holiday surge.
Recent supply chain analysis found that nearly 500,000 warehouse and logistics jobs remain open in the United States, and nearly half of all warehouses now rely on flexible or temporary labor. For most of 2026, that temporary staffing has been manageable. But September represents something different. This isn’t the normal seasonal ramp-up where distribution centers hire temporary workers for the November-December peak. This is a compressed, artificial crisis that requires inventory expertise and speed simultaneously.
The Labor Math
Industry data shows that most facilities currently achieve a precision rate of around 85-90%, with the missing 10% often representing phantom inventory—stock that exists in the system but isn’t physically on the shelf. That accuracy gap widens during periods of high workforce turnover and rapid growth. High productivity pressure and workforce turnover increase human error, leading to miscounts and misplaced inventory.
To understand why this matters in September 2026, you need to understand the constraint. Average annual turnover among warehouse workers sits at approximately 36%, which means facilities are constantly training new staff who haven’t yet learned inventory locations, SKU management, or safety protocols. When you need to accelerate cycle counting to handle an unexpected surge, you’re asking the most inexperienced workers to perform tasks that require precision under pressure. Retailers’ permanent staffing models aren’t built to handle this. Pick-and-pack workers, forklift operators, and shift leads remain the most difficult roles to staff. Pulling core employees away from receiving and fulfillment to conduct extended cycle counts creates its own downstream problem: deliveries don’t get unloaded, shipments don’t get processed, and the backlog grows.
This is why some retailers are now treating supplemental inventory staffing not as a “we’re short-handed” measure, but as a structural solution. Bringing in temporary workers specifically tasked with cycle counting, reconciliation, and verification lets core staff continue receiving merchandise and fulfilling orders without disruption.
The Permanent Workforce Problem
Underneath the September crunch lies a longer-term issue that tariff cycles can’t explain. According to supply chain research, warehouse labor experienced wage increases of 15-20% between 2020 and 2024, yet the supply of workers willing to take those roles at current wage rates isn’t growing proportionally. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects continued demand growth in warehouse and material moving roles through 2032, while the supply of workers is not keeping pace.
That squeeze means permanent staffing is already constrained. Adding seasonal headcount is harder than it used to be. The economics don’t necessarily work in favor of hiring permanent workers. If a facility needs 20 additional people to handle cycle counting for eight weeks, carrying those people on payroll for the remaining 44 weeks becomes an expensive way to solve a temporary problem. Warehouse labor represents 50-70% of total DC operating costs, making it the single largest controllable expense in most facilities. Operations managers know those numbers intimately. They’re not going to hire permanent workers for temporary surges. They’re going to look for flexible solutions.
The Accuracy Risk
The combination of early inventory, labor shortages, and compressed timelines creates an accuracy crisis that could extend through the holiday season. Phantom inventory problems that develop in September don’t resolve in October. They cascade forward. A retailer with $2 million in merchandise that exists in the system but isn’t on the shelf has a $2 million problem when they try to fulfill orders in November.
The industry has been watching this threshold for years. Inventory accuracy ranks as the #1 warehouse management challenge, with shrinkage costing facilities 1.4% of revenue annually. That’s not a rounding error. For a 500,000-square-foot distribution center, that’s real money.
Operators who have committed to automation report labor-cost reductions in the 25-to-30-percent range and inventory accuracy approaching 99 percent. But automation requires capital investment and deployment time. For most facilities, that’s not available for a September crisis.
What Happens Next
Businesses that pulled merchandise forward may find their inventory workload peaking earlier as well. What separates this September from normal seasonal challenges is that the problem wasn’t forecast by consumer demand. It was created by external timing.
Retailers are now in a race to reconcile their inventory before holiday sales start accelerating. That means getting merchandise out of receiving areas, into the right locations, and verified in the system. Some operations are bringing in staffing agencies to provide temporary counting capacity. Others are running extended cycle counts during night shifts. A few are implementing augmented reality and scanning technologies to speed up the process.
The ones succeeding aren’t waiting for the problem to resolve itself. They’re treating supplemental inventory staffing as a capacity strategy, not an admission of crisis. That shift in thinking matters, because tariffs aren’t going away. The NRF noted that one round of tariffs had been replaced with another, but retailers are well positioned for the holiday season as they adapt to shifting circumstances. What the federation didn’t address is what those “shifting situations” look like for the people running the warehouses. For them, September 2026 is a preview of what happens when supply chain timing gets compressed.
Why This Matters for Holiday Sales
Getting inventory counts right in September isn’t a back-office exercise. It determines what’s actually available to sell in October and November. Retailers who can’t verify their stock accurately can’t fulfill orders reliably. Consumers notice when they order something that shows as in stock and it never arrives, or when a retailer runs a promotion they can’t fulfill. That accuracy problem hits hardest during the season when retailers have the most to lose. November and December account for the bulk of annual retail revenue for most merchants. A 10% accuracy gap could cost millions in missed sales, chargebacks, and customer frustration. The retailers who get through this quarter are the ones treating their inventory crisis as a real operational problem, not a temporary blip. That means bringing in expertise and capacity when needed, even when it’s not in the traditional playbook.
