Why So Many Companies Struggle to Retain Good Hourly Workers

Most founders and executives manage one company, one role and one schedule. Most people reading this probably do, too. One employer, one calendar, one set of work demands.

But for millions of hourly workers, that is not how work functions.

Millions of Americans don’t rely on a single job with one steady paycheck. They piece together income across multiple roles, stitching together hours across multiple employers, schedules and expectations. Among hourly workers, this isn’t the exception — it’s increasingly the norm. In a 2025 survey, 34% said they rely on more than one job to get by. This is not a temporary trend. It reflects a broader shift in how work is structured, and it is only accelerating.

This is not about chasing a side hustle. It is about stability. One job often does not provide enough hours or predictability to rely on week after week.

The hidden logistics of hourly work

Over the past year building Ando, I have spoken with hundreds of hourly workers across restaurants, grocery stores, warehouses and hotels.

One server in Atlanta described her system: She keeps two calendars. One tracks the shifts she is scheduled for. The other tracks shifts she might get called into. The second calendar exists because last-minute changes are so common. Planning your life around maybes is exhausting.

The hardest part is not just the hours themselves. It is the logistics of making multiple schedules fit into one life.

A shift change that seems minor from a manager’s perspective can disrupt an entire week. A shift moved by a few hours can mean losing income somewhere else. It can mean scrambling for childcare, rearranging transportation or canceling commitments that were built around the original plan.

One worker I spoke with manages three employers, three scheduling apps and a fourth calendar just to track potential changes.

When one shift moves, the entire week has to be renegotiated like a puzzle.

The stress of constant adjustment

Over time, that instability wears people down.

The stress does not come only from the work itself. It comes from never feeling settled.

Predictable hours shape everything, whether it’s school pickup, doctor appointments, transportation, second jobs and basic household planning. They also determine income. When hours change week to week, it becomes difficult to know what next month will look like.

Managers feel pressure from the other side. Running a restaurant or retail store means trying to forecast demand and build schedules with incomplete information. Demand shifts. Employees leave. Someone calls out sick. A rush hits unexpectedly.

Schedules get rewritten in real time just to keep operations running.

Workers and managers are caught in the same cycle of instability.

The cost of constant turnover

That cycle has a measurable cost.

In restaurants, about 40% of hourly hires leave within 72 hours. Across many hourly roles, annual turnover runs between 30% and 150%. Replacing a worker often costs more than $5,800 once recruiting, onboarding and training are factored in.

Stores can lose thousands of dollars in a single week when staffing does not match demand.

Now consider the scale. The United States has roughly 80 million hourly workers who together account for about 146 billion hours of labor every year.

Yet the systems used to match people to work remain blunt.

Businesses hire because they urgently need someone. Workers take jobs because they need income immediately. The match happens quickly, often with very little information on either side. Soon, the mismatch becomes clear. The schedule conflicts with another job. The hours fluctuate too much. The commute is too long.

Someone leaves, and the cycle starts again.

A visibility problem

This pattern has become so common that it is treated as inevitable. Turnover is seen as part of the cost of doing business.

But much of the churn comes from a basic problem of visibility.

Managers only see the applicants who happen to apply when the company is hiring. Workers often have little way of knowing whether a job will offer consistent hours or whether their availability will actually align with the schedule.

We are not short on good people. We are short on a system that can match them to the right work at the right time.

Both sides are making decisions with incomplete information.

A job posting might list the hourly wage and responsibilities, but it rarely answers the questions that matter most to workers:

• Will the schedule change every week?

• Will reliable employees get more hours?

• Will shifts actually fit around my life?

Managers face the same limitation. When a store is short-staffed, they hire from whoever happens to apply at that moment. Strong candidates may be in that pool. But many of the best long-term fits are invisible because they are not actively searching that week.

In this system, timing often matters more than fit.

A more stable system is possible

The structure of work has already changed. The systems around it have not.

Many workers now build income across multiple roles. Cost of living and unpredictable hours make that necessary. For someone juggling multiple jobs, schedule stability can matter as much as pay.

This is where technology, and increasingly AI, can change the equation.

In most industries, demand is not random. It is highly predictable. Restaurants know their lunch rush. Retailers know their weekends. Hotels know their occupancy patterns.

What has been missing is the ability to translate that predictable demand into stable, optimized schedules that actually work for both the business and the worker.

When businesses can forecast demand more accurately and align staffing to it, schedules become more consistent. When schedules are consistent, workers can plan their lives. When workers can plan their lives, they stay.

Companies that recognize this shift will have an advantage.

It starts with treating workers’ time with the same rigor applied to costs, inventory and operations. Better forecasting, more thoughtful scheduling and clearer alignment between jobs and availability can remove much of the instability that drives churn.

For workers, the benefit is straightforward: more stability, less stress and a clearer path to consistent income.

For businesses, the payoff is equally practical: stronger teams, smoother operations and less time spent constantly rehiring.

Across an economy with tens of millions of hourly workers, even small improvements in how people and shifts are matched can have an outsized impact.

The future of hourly work will not be defined by how many hours people work. It will be defined by how well those hours fit into their lives.

Most founders and executives manage one company, one role and one schedule. Most people reading this probably do, too. One employer, one calendar, one set of work demands.

But for millions of hourly workers, that is not how work functions.

Millions of Americans don’t rely on a single job with one steady paycheck. They piece together income across multiple roles, stitching together hours across multiple employers, schedules and expectations. Among hourly workers, this isn’t the exception — it’s increasingly the norm. In a 2025 survey, 34% said they rely on more than one job to get by. This is not a temporary trend. It reflects a broader shift in how work is structured, and it is only accelerating.