16 Retail Staffing and Labor Statistics Every Owner Should Know in 2026

We read the Bureau of Labor Statistics retail trade data, the June 2026 Employment Situation and Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, the Occupational Outlook Handbook, the Census Annual Integrated Economic Survey, and the 2026 American Customer Satisfaction Index retail study. Together, these sources show the size of the retail workforce, the roles inside it, and the difference between labor supply and actual operating capacity.

The central lesson is that there is no reliable national number for how many employees a store should have. Retail includes fixed stores, nonstore retailers, checkout, selling, inventory, customer service, and fulfillment. The statistics below keep industry employment, occupation employment, labor turnover, pay, and customer experience separate.

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Retail trade employed 15.460 million people in June 2026

The BLS Employment Situation counted 15,459.7 thousand seasonally adjusted employees in retail trade in June 2026. Employment was 15,467.2 thousand in May and 15,425.5 thousand in June 2025. The June monthly change was a decrease of 7.5 thousand.

This is an industry employment estimate, not a count of people working in physical stores. BLS defines retail trade as including store retailers and nonstore retailers. The industry total can therefore include workers supporting online, catalog, delivery, and other nonstore operations.

Census AIES recorded 17.422 million retail employer-firm employees in 2023

The 2023 Census Annual Integrated Economic Survey reported 17,422,499 employees for national NAICS 44-45 retail trade employer firms. The AIES measure is based on the employment field for March 12 and covers domestic private nonfarm employer businesses with paid employees.

The AIES and BLS figures are not contradictory headcounts. They use different programs, reference periods, coverage rules, and statistical methods. AIES is useful for an annual employer-firm operating baseline; BLS is useful for a current monthly labor-market indicator. Neither figure is a universal store staffing ratio.

Production and nonsupervisory retail employment reached 13.348 million in June 2026

The BLS June 2026 estimate for production and nonsupervisory employees in retail trade was 13,348.4 thousand. These employees averaged 30.6 hours per week, $22.20 per hour, and $679.32 per week.

This series is a closer market-level proxy for frontline operations than the all-employee total, but it is still not a pure store-floor or fulfillment count. It includes a wide range of retail operating roles and does not tell an owner how many hours were assigned to selling, checkout, replenishment, pickup, delivery, or customer support.

All retail trade employees averaged $26.35 per hour and 29.9 hours per week

For all retail trade employees, BLS reported seasonally adjusted average hourly earnings of $26.35 and average weekly earnings of $787.87 in June 2026. Average weekly hours were 29.9.

The industry average is a useful market reference, but it is not an all-in labor cost. Employer payroll taxes, benefits, recruiting, training, overtime, schedule changes, absence, and management time all sit outside the hourly wage figure.

Retail trade had 774,000 job openings in June 2026

The June 2026 JOLTS Table A reported 774 thousand seasonally adjusted retail trade job openings, equal to a 4.8% openings rate. BLS defines a job opening as a position that is open on the last business day of the month and that meets the survey's conditions for recruiting and available work.

An opening is not the same as a hire, a posted job advertisement, or a vacancy that has remained open for a particular number of days. It is a point-in-time labor demand measure, so owners should not add monthly openings together and call the result a unique number of jobs.

Retail hired 652,000 workers and separated 672,000 in June 2026

JOLTS reported 652 thousand retail trade hires and 672 thousand total separations in June 2026. The hire rate was 4.2% and the total separations rate was 4.3%.

Separations include quits, layoffs and discharges, and other separations. A month with many hires can still produce weak staffing capacity if separations are also high, if new hires are not yet trained, or if the hours are concentrated in the wrong stores and tasks.

Retail trade recorded 471,000 quits and a 3.0% quit rate in June 2026

The June 2026 JOLTS Table 4 reported 471 thousand retail trade quits, with a seasonally adjusted quit rate of 3.0%. Quits are generally voluntary separations initiated by employees, so the quit rate is a labor-mobility signal rather than a complete measure of turnover.

Owners should report quits separately from layoffs, transfers, retirements, and other separations. Voluntary exits may point to pay, schedule, management, commuting, or job-quality issues, but the national series cannot identify which factor affected a specific retailer.

Retail sales workers numbered 4.209 million in 2024

The BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook counted 4,208,800 retail sales workers in 2024. This is an occupation measure, not the same thing as BLS industry employment. Retail sales workers sell merchandise, spare and replacement parts, and equipment to customers across the occupations included in the BLS group.

The difference in scope matters. A retail trade business may employ salespeople, cashiers, stock clerks, supervisors, customer service representatives, technology staff, managers, and nonstore fulfillment workers. A retail sales worker count captures only the occupation group, not all of those roles.

Retail sales workers were projected to have 586,000 annual openings despite 0% growth

BLS projects retail sales worker employment to change from 4,208,800 in 2024 to 4,197,800 in 2034, a projected change of 0% when rounded. That is a numeric decline of 11,000 jobs, but BLS still projects about 586,000 openings per year on average over the decade.

Most of those openings are replacement demand: workers transferring to other occupations or leaving the labor force. A flat employment projection can therefore coexist with a large recruiting and training workload.

Cashier employment was projected to fall 10%, while annual openings remained 542,600

BLS projects cashier employment to decline from 3,157,200 in 2024 to 2,843,600 in 2034, a 10% decrease. It still projects about 542,600 cashier openings per year, with those openings mainly reflecting replacement demand.

BLS attributes the projected decline partly to self-service checkout technology and increasing online sales. That does not mean checkout labor disappears. It means the mix of cashier tasks, exception handling, customer assistance, and supervision can change while stores continue to recruit for replacement needs.

Retail occupation data show a wide gap between frontline and supervisory pay

The BLS retail trade data for 2025 reported these occupation counts and median pay levels:

These are occupation-level medians within retail trade, not an employer's total compensation cost. They exclude the value of benefits and other labor overhead. They also show why using one average wage for every retail role can distort a labor budget.

Industry employment cannot be divided by establishments to create a staffing benchmark

The BLS retail trade industry had 1,066,341 private establishments in Q3 2025, while the June 2026 industry employment estimate was 15.4597 million. Dividing those figures would produce a mathematical average, but not a useful staffing standard.

The calculation mixes different periods and combines stores, nonstore retailers, and many different retail formats. A warehouse-style retailer, a convenience store, a department store, and an online retailer do not have the same opening hours, assortment, fulfillment model, service promise, or labor tasks.

The correct local denominator is usually worked hours by task and location: selling hours, checkout hours, replenishment hours, pickup hours, fulfillment hours, customer-service hours, and management hours.

Specialty retailers scored 83 for staff courtesy and 86 for pickup accuracy in ACSI's 2026 study

The 2026 ACSI Retail and Consumer Shipping Study gave specialty retailers a score of 83 for courtesy and helpfulness of staff, 86 for pickup order accuracy, and 84 for speed of order readiness. Ease of pickup scored 87.

The ACSI study is customer-experience evidence, not proof that a particular staffing level caused a particular score. It is based on 31,293 completed surveys collected from January through December 2025. A retailer can use the metrics as outcome measures alongside its own staffing and hour data, but should not infer causality from the national averages.

Build a role table before comparing store, fulfillment, and customer-service labor

The source evidence can be used together if each row keeps its coverage visible:

Calculate labor productivity from hours, not headcount alone

Retail owners can turn their own schedules and operating data into measures that are more actionable than a headcount comparison:

• Sales per labor hour = net sales divided by worked labor hours. Keep the store, channel, and period consistent.
• Gross profit per labor hour = gross profit divided by worked labor hours. This is often more useful than sales per hour when categories have different margins.
• Labor cost ratio = wages, payroll taxes, and benefits divided by net sales.
• Transactions per checkout hour = completed transactions divided by staffed checkout hours.
• Orders per fulfillment hour = fulfilled orders divided by fulfillment labor hours.
• Units replenished per labor hour = units placed or picked divided by replenishment labor hours.
• Schedule fill rate = worked scheduled hours divided by published scheduled hours.
• Turnover rate = separations divided by average employment. Report voluntary quits separately from total separations.

Do not use these formulas to create a national benchmark from the BLS totals. Use them to compare the same retailer across stores, shifts, seasons, roles, and channels.

Track labor capacity beside the customer and inventory outcomes it is meant to support

A useful labor dashboard should link each shift to the work that shift was expected to perform. Retain role, store or fulfillment site, task, scheduled hours, worked hours, absence, overtime, training status, sales, transactions, queue time, order readiness time, units replenished, stockout observations, customer-service contacts, and customer-experience scores.

This makes the analysis testable. If more checkout hours are meant to reduce waiting, track checkout hours and wait time together. If replenishment hours are meant to improve availability, track replenishment hours and stockout events together. If pickup labor is meant to improve readiness, track fulfillment hours, order accuracy, and ready-on-time performance together. Workforce counts alone cannot establish those service effects.

Sources

• BLS: Retail Trade, NAICS 44-45
• BLS: Employment Situation, June 2026
• BLS: Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary, June 2026
• BLS: JOLTS Table A, June 2026
• BLS: JOLTS Table 4, quits, June 2026
• BLS: Occupational Outlook Handbook, Retail Sales Workers
• BLS: Occupational Outlook Handbook, Cashiers
• Census Bureau: Annual Integrated Economic Survey
• Census Bureau: 2023 AIES Retail Trade basic data file
• ACSI: Retail and Consumer Shipping Study 2026