JOLTS shows more openings, but retail hiring remains cautious at Big Lots

Big Lots store teams are looking at a labor market that sounds healthier on paper than it can feel on the sales floor. The April 2026 JOLTS report showed 7.6 million job openings, up 731,000 from March, while hires fell to 5.1 million and total separations slipped to 5.0 million.

For retail workers, the most telling number was not the headline openings count but the slowdown in movement. Quits held at 3.0 million, layoffs and discharges came in at 1.7 million, and in retail trade layoffs and discharges fell by 88,000. That can mean fewer involuntary exits, but it can also mean slower turnover and fewer people cycling through stores, which leaves employers more selective about who they bring in and how fast they backfill.

For Big Lots employees, that mismatch matters in practical ways. Openings do not automatically turn into staffed shifts, especially when hiring cools at the same time. The result can be more uneven coverage, more waiting on replacements, and more pressure on existing workers to absorb freight, register coverage, recovery, and customer service duties while managers try to fill slots that remain open longer than they did in a hotter market.

The retail data also suggests a labor market that is less frantic than it was during the peak churn years. Fewer quits and fewer discharges can give workers more leverage when they are looking for a move, but they also point to a workforce that is sticking around while watching the economy. For a Big Lots crew, that can mean fewer new faces on the schedule and more of the same people carrying the load week after week.

That backdrop lands hard at a company that has already lived through a long stretch of disruption. Big Lots filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Sept. 9, 2024, in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware under case 24-11967. The company entered bankruptcy with more than 1,300 stores and about 27,700 employees, then reached an asset purchase agreement with Gordon Brothers Retail Partners on Dec. 27, 2024. Judge J. Kate Stickles approved the sale on Dec. 31, 2024, and it closed on Jan. 3, 2025, for about $495 million.

The restructuring, tied to Gordon Brothers Retail Partners and Variety Wholesalers, was meant to preserve hundreds of stores and thousands of jobs, but it also came with liquidation and a later Chapter 7 conversion motion in late 2025. Against that history, the latest JOLTS numbers do not signal a frozen job market. They signal something more familiar to Big Lots workers: openings are there, but getting every store fully staffed still takes time.