BLS survey highlights why Dollar General work stays on-site and shift-based

The latest American Time Use Survey shows how sharply retail work differs from white-collar schedules: in 2025, 35 percent of employed people did some or all of their work at home on days they worked, while 70 percent did some or all of their work at their workplace. Full-time workers averaged 8.1 hours on days they worked, and employed people spent about 1.99 hours a day on household activities. For Dollar General associates, that leaves little room for the fantasy that work-life strain can be fixed by logging in from home. The real pressure point is the schedule.

Dollar General’s own business model keeps that pressure on the clock. The company says its retail jobs center on stocking shelves, managing inventory and customer service, work that has to happen in person when shoppers come through the doors. In fiscal 2025, Dollar General said it operated more than 20,800 stores across 48 U.S. states and five cities in Mexico, opened 589 stores, relocated 47 stores, remodeled more than 4,254 stores and opened a new distribution center in North Little Rock, Arkansas. Founded in 1939 and still headquartered in Goodlettsville, Tennessee, the chain depends on hourly labor that has to match the flow of customers, freight deliveries and weekend traffic.

That is why advance notice and consistent hours matter so much in Dollar General stores. The BLS says employed people spent an average of 5.02 hours a day working, or 7.66 hours on days they worked, and 65.5 percent of employed people were working on an average day. For a Dollar General associate, those hours sit beside childcare, school runs, transportation delays, errands and often a second job. Nights and weekends are not a side issue in discount retail; they are part of the job, and they can be the hardest shifts to absorb when the rest of life is already packed.

Dollar General’s 2024 annual report says the company monitors employee applicant flow and staffing levels, especially at the store manager level, a reminder that keeping schedules covered is an operational problem as much as a people problem. That pressure has been visible before: in July 2024, the U.S. Department of Labor announced a corporate-wide Occupational Safety and Health Administration settlement requiring significant workplace safety improvements in Dollar General stores nationwide. In Louisiana, workers organized through Step Up Louisiana around safety, fair pay, short staffing and erratic scheduling, a sign that unstable hours can become a broader labor fight when stores run thin and the workload keeps coming.