The holiday shopping season is looking bright for L.A. businesses and job seekers this year as the economy continues to bounce back from the Great Recession.

“Economically speaking, Angelenos are more well off than they’ve been in a long time,” said Christopher Thornberg, an economist and founding partner of Beacon Economics.

Incomes rose across all economic brackets last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and local retailers are planning for holiday crowds similar to what they saw in 2015.

Seasonal retail hiring, including department stores, boutiques, restaurants, and bars, might hit a new peak high, said Kimberly Ritter-Martinez, an economist at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. Retail employment in the area hit a new high last month of almost 427,000, according to the California Employment Development Department.

“With the economy in general doing well, we’re near full employment,” said Ritter-Martinez. “The good news from the Census Bureau a couple of weeks ago that employment and incomes are up all contributes to what we can expect this holiday shopping season.”

Jill Wahlquist, vice president of Tom’s Toys, which has stores in Beverly Hills and Montrose, said she is expecting holiday crowds to be about the same size as last year, around 200 shoppers a day, compared with the usual 50 to 60.

However, she said the company isn’t planning to hire any seasonal employees this year because they’d hired more employees over the summer and left room in their schedule for extra holiday shifts.

Tom’s also raised wages in order to attract the right kind of workers.

“It seems like the job market is picking up,” said Wahlquist. “Starting in the fourth quarter of last year, the people we were getting from job ads for Christmas weren’t cutting it. We saw a bit of growth in sales so we increased the wage.”

As more sales shift online from brick-and-mortar stores, more of the local jobs are shifting to distribution warehouses in the Inland Empire, such as Amazon.com Inc.’s fulfillment facilities. Data from the EDD began showing a new seasonal trend in warehousing and storage employment in the Inland Empire beginning about four years ago. For April, the most recent month available, there were almost 45,000 jobs such jobs in that region.

The shift to online means that the economic boom might be felt less acutely by brick-and-mortar retailers, said Beacon’s Thornberg.

“We’re not expecting anything apocalyptic or a huge windfall,” said Jon Liu, a manager at Amoeba Records in Hollywood. “This year’s been fairly comparable to last year.”

If there is an air of uncertainty it is coming in the form of the presidential election, and that, Ritter-Martinez said, might delay the start of the shopping season.

“Consumer confidence is such a big factor,” she said. “The election can make people hesitant because they’re not sure what to expect.”

Don Kipper, owner of Kip’s Toyland at the Farmers Market in the Fairfax District, echoed those sentiments.

“I think a great deal is going to depend on the results of the election,” Kipper said. “Whoever wins will have their own unique impact on the economy. I think people might be turtles and go back into their shells if they’re not pleased with the results.”

Sales of toys in particular have been stronger in Southern California than the rest of the country this year so far, with a growth of 9 percent in both dollars and units in the January-August period, compared with 7 percent nationally, according to market research company NPD Group.

Juli Lennett, a toy industry analyst at NPD, said that as a result, local toy sales might be higher than the 6 percent growth predicted nationally for the fourth quarter, plus or minus 1 percent. She noted that sales of outdoor and sports toys in particular had grown.

“People in Southern California probably spend a lot more time outside than people in the Northeast,” said Lennett.

Sales of toys related to movies, especially “Star Wars,” have also been particularly hot this year. Toys for “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” coming out in December will be rolled out at the end of this month, she said.