零售业近期表现好坏参半，前景亦不明朗

Key Points:

• Retail categories are currently not experiencing much hiring activity; job postings and hiring are both below 2019 levels.
• Wage growth for Food Preparation & Service workers is flat, while wages in retail have picked up slowly since the beginning of 2025.
• Hiring Lab research shows a substantial share of multiple-job holders work in service sectors, highlighting the need for flexible work arrangements.

The retail labor market remains static, defined by declining job postings, limited hiring, and little movement among workers. On top of that, the outlook for retail is uncertain given broad economic volatility and the risk that consumer spending may not hold up forever amid ongoing cost-of-living pressures.

In July, the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index – a measure of price inflation – was up 3.7% from a year earlier, well above the Federal Reserve Bank’s stated target of 2%. High inflation is bad enough on its own, but when paired with slowing wage growth, it becomes a bigger problem. Annual US wage growth, as tracked by the Indeed Wage Tracker, has slowed from its recent high of 3.4% in January 2025 to just 2.5% in July 2026. This means workers’ wage growth is not keeping up with inflation, which may be one factor explaining why everyone is so down about this economy.

Whatever the reason(s), it is clear that most measures of consumer confidence are coming in weak. For example, the Conference Board Consumer Confidence Survey has trended mostly downward since mid-2024, and its August 2026 reading of 89.4 leaves it at levels last seen in the immediate aftermath of pandemic.

Where the rubber meets the road for inflation, wage growth, and the retail sector is with consumer spending. Recent data releases show consumer activity is by no means outright reversing, but may be starting to sputter. Census Bureau data for Advance Retail And Food Sales in July fell 0.6% from the previous month, its largest decline since May 2025. Moreover, July’s month-over-month gain of 2% in Personal Consumption Expenditures marks its weakest read since the start of the year.

Job posting trends are struggling in the retail categories

The Indeed Job Postings Index sheds light on a retail vertical that is lagging behind the rest of the labor market. Overall job postings in the US are roughly even with the pre-pandemic baseline after falling 3% in the year to August 21, 2026. Job posting declines in the retail vertical are a shade worse than the broader market, with Hospitality & Tourism and Retail dropping 3.9% and 4.5%, respectively, over the same period. Food Preparation & Service postings are losing more ground, with declines over the past year hitting 9%.

Looking at the bigger picture, demand in Retail is lagging the most, down just over 14% from its February 1, 2020, level. In fact, all retail categories exhibit more muted demand for workers than the overall labor market, with each resting below pre-pandemic state.

Retail hiring still down despite a small uptick

The overall hiring rate has hovered between 3.1 and 3.5 over the past year, a level not seen consistently since the post-financial crisis hangover days of 2013. Employers in retail and related categories have followed suit, with the hiring rates in both Leisure & Hospitality and the Retail Trade remaining below their 2019 averages. Lately, Retail Trade hiring has looked the most promising, with the rate rising slightly from its recent nadir of 3.5 in December 2025 to 4.2 in July 2026. Meanwhile, the Leisure & Hospitality hiring rate remains close to its recent low.

Payroll data reveals a split in the retail industry

Job postings and hiring across retail categories remain muted, but a deeper look into Bureau of Labor Statistics payroll data shows a more nuanced picture. While overall Retail Trade industry payrolls are flat over the past year, several retail segments are adding to payrolls. Sporting Goods, Hobby, Book & Misc, and Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry both notched employment gains over 1% in the year to July 2026. At the other end of the spectrum, payrolls are falling in multiple categories, with Furniture, Electronics & Appliances suffering a 2.2% drop in the year to July 2026.

Wage growth is beating the labor market average

While there are few job postings and little hiring activity in the retail categories, the pay picture is relatively healthy. As of July, wage growth in both the Food Preparation & Service and Retail sectors is outpacing the overall labor market average of 2.5%, although Food Preparation & Service wage growth has been mostly flat for much of the past two years. Retail wage growth has climbed in fits and starts since bottoming out at 1.4% in January 2025, reaching a recent high of 3.2% in July 2026. Correlation is not causation, but this relatively healthy recent wage growth could be driving the small uptick in quits among Retail Trade workers, as they recognize that opportunities for higher pay may be found with a new employer. It’s also worth noting that the strong overall wage growth in retail roles is coming from both hourly and salaried roles, bucking a recent trend of stronger salary growth across the labor market.

Retail and Leisure & Hospitality workers staying put in slow labor market

After several years of workers across the labor market staying put, those in the retail categories are doing mostly the same, showing only a small willingness to change. Quit rates in both Retail Trade and Leisure & Hospitality rebounded after hitting their recent low in September 2025 (2% and 3%, respectively). The Retail Trade quits rate was 3% in June 2026, while workers in Leisure & Hospitality are getting slightly more restless, with quits rising more than a full percentage point from their recent low of 3% in September 2025 to hit 4.2% in June 2026. Despite the recent gains, both categories remain below their pre-pandemic level, and the lack of dynamism limits a typical source of talent for employers in the retail space. Low quits rates mean there is less talent available and that talent is more likely to be looking for better roles after leaving their previous job.

Workers are holding tight, but don’t necessarily feel great about it

Retail workers may be mostly staying put in an uninspiring labor market, but data from Glassdoor reveals that they don’t feel particularly great about where they are right now either. The Glassdoor Employee Confidence Index shows that the share of employees across the labor market reporting a positive 6-month business outlook fell to a record low of 43.5% in July, and the dour mood extends to retail categories as well. Employee confidence for all three retail-related categories is well below that of the overall labor market and clearly trending down, with Restaurants & Food Service bringing up the rear at a record low.

Multiple job holders highlight the importance of flexibility in retail

Recent Hiring Lab research shows that 16% of active job seekers already held multiple jobs while searching for another. Among job seekers on Indeed who currently hold multiple jobs, most work in the service sector, with Food Preparation & Service and Retail together accounting for more than 25%. This highlights the importance of flexibility in retail-related categories. Employers that provide flexibility in shift work and scheduling open themselves up to a broader talent pool of workers looking to work multiple jobs for various reasons.

Conclusion

The labor market for Retail and related categories remains mixed. Job postings are slowing, hiring rates are flat, and worker quits have only ticked up slightly. A rebound also faces headwinds from economic uncertainty and rising prices, with consumer spending no longer the sure bet it once was. For now, employers looking to recruit in the service categories face limited competition due to fewer job openings. But for those still facing difficulties, the talent pool can be expanded through flexible work arrangements that might appeal to multiple jobholders across all service categories.

Methodology

Data on seasonally adjusted Indeed job postings are an index of the number of job postings on a given day, using a seven-day trailing average. February 1, 2020, is our pre-pandemic baseline, so the index is set to 100 on that day. Data for several dates in 2021 and 2022 are missing and were interpolated.

Data on wage growth are the average year-on-year percentage changes in wages and salaries advertised in job postings on Indeed, controlling for job titles.

We count a profile as a multiple job holder when it shows two or more jobs at different employers overlapping for two or more consecutive months. Jobs listed as ongoing are closed out at the month the worker last actively updated their profile. A profile is “active” in a month if it has at least one application start that month.

Gig presence is measured by matching employer names against a fixed list of platforms: Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, Grubhub, Postmates, Shipt, Gopuff, TaskRabbit, Amazon Flex, Walmart Spark, Rover, Thumbtack, Handy, Fiverr, Upwork, Veho, Roadie, Wonolo, Instawork, Turo, Dolly, Bellhop, Care.com, Favor Delivery, and Bite Squad. This measure is employer-based, not role-based: it captures anyone listing one of these companies as an employer, including full-time and corporate staff, not just platform gig workers.

See Glassdoor Economic Research blog for more information on the Employee Confidence Index methodology

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