The Australian Services Union was called to meet with workers at Target's Geelong headquarters early on Thursday morning.

The union has confirmed that 23 Geelong workers have been retrenched from the division, with their jobs to be outsourced to global consulting firm Accenture.

An ASU spokeswoman said there was "no guarantee" the jobs would stay in Australia.

It is the second time Target has swung the axe in Geelong, with 260 workers laid off from its North Geelong headquarters after a company restructure last year.

Geelong has suffered a string of heavy economic blows in recent years, with closures and large-scale job cuts at Ford, Boral, Qantas at Avalon Airport.

The city's unemployment reached a 15-year high when it topped 10 per cent in July, well above the statewide average of 6.6 per cent.

ASU Victorian private sector secretary Ingrid Stitt said the past year has been a difficult time for the Geelong community, "and for Target staff who have really knuckled down to turn the company around.

"Target likes to call itself '100 per cent Geelong', [but] where is the loyalty when its people need it most? Target must come clean about where these jobs will be located," she said.

"This city is going through a gut-wrenching period of unemployment, and here is Target outsourcing jobs that will be located where exactly?"

Ms Stitt condemned the decision to slash the 23 office jobs as "cost-cutting at its most basic".

The redundancies, which will mostly affect women, are expected to occur until October, Ms Stitt said.

Opposition Leader Daniel Andrews said it was a sad day for Geelong.

"Some may say, well, 23 is not a large number, but Geelong can't even afford to lose one job," he said.

"Unemployment is running at 10.5 per cent ... that's without Alcoa numbers in those figures, that's without the flow-on effects of Ford announcing they are going to leave."

Company spokesman Jim Cooper said Target had decided to outsource the jobs as it moved to roll out new invoice-processing technology.

The retrenched workers will remain in their roles until October 10.

Mr Cooper said the company would make "every effort" to redeploy them elsewhere within the business.

It is understood that 26 new positions were created in Target's buying and planning divisions last week, and are only open to internal applicants.