IHL Group launches weekly hiring demand index for retail and hospitality

IHL Group has launched a weekly index that tracks live job postings across retail and hospitality companies representing 942,937 stores in the U.S., Canada and Europe. The new measure is designed to give employers, vendors and investors an earlier read on labor demand than official payroll data.

Why it matters: - Open job postings are often a leading signal of hiring plans before those hires show up in government labor data. - The new index gives retailers, restaurant operators, technology vendors and investors a weekly view of where frontline labor demand is building. - Seasonal hiring is already rising, which can affect staffing, store execution and holiday readiness.

What happened: - IHL Group launched the IHL Hiring Demand Index, or HDI, on Oct. 12, 2026. - The index tracks open job postings across retail and hospitality companies representing 942,937 stores in the United States, Canada and Europe. - The HDI is published every Monday at the index page. - In the week ending Oct. 11, 2026, the index stood at 106.0. - That was down 0.7% from the prior week and up 1.3% over the past four weeks.

The details: - The HDI is built from IHL Group's Sophia job-postings panel. - The index is set to June 7, 2026 = 100. - A four-week average is included to smooth out single-week swings. - The index tracks hiring by job function, including store operations, restaurant and kitchen, and technology roles. - The index also tracks the share of open postings for seasonal and holiday roles. - Regional trends are reported for the United States, Canada and Europe. - Each company is compared only with itself from one week to the next, so companies joining or leaving the panel do not move the index. - The HDI measures open job postings, not completed hires. - Store operations roles made up 55.6% of open postings with an identifiable job type, down 2.0% on the week and up 13.1% over four weeks. - Restaurant and kitchen roles accounted for 13.7% of those postings, down 1.0% on the week and up 0.9% over four weeks. - Technology roles accounted for 0.8% of those postings, down 0.7% on the week and up 3.1% over four weeks. - Seasonal and holiday roles made up 7.4% of all open postings, up from 2.1% four weeks earlier. - Canada hiring demand rose 2.4% on the week, Europe rose 2.3%, and the United States fell 1.2%. - Roughly one in four store postings with a stated job level is for manager level or above, at 24.6%. - Among technology postings with a full job description, SQL and Python each appear in 21% of postings, and agentic AI appears in 5%.

Between the lines: - The index suggests retailers are still staffing the store floor even as broader labor data remains delayed. - The jump in seasonal and holiday postings points to a holiday buildout that is already underway. - The technology posting mix shows retailers are still hiring for data and automation skills alongside frontline roles. - Greg Buzek, president of IHL Group, said the index is meant to show where opportunities are building before official labor data catches up.

What's next: - IHL Group says new HDI issues will be published every Monday. - The first issue includes exhibits by job function and region, a comparison with official labor statistics and methodology details. - IHL Group describes the HDI as a continuing weekly read on retail and hospitality hiring demand.

The bottom line: - The HDI turns live job postings into a fast-moving gauge of retail and hospitality labor demand, with early evidence that holiday staffing is already accelerating.