Hiring
Hiring at small businesses that use Homebase turned positive year over year in September for the first time in nearly two years. Jobs added were up 0.1% from September 2025, while turnover was 6.5% higher, according to the company’s September Main Street Health Report.
The improvement is small, but it ends a long run of negative comparisons. Homebase’s hiring series was below its year-earlier level every month from December 2024 through August 2026, including declines of 1.5% in July and 2.3% in August. The last positive reading was November 2024, at 1.2%.
Stabilization is not yet expansion
The same report shows the number of employees working was down 3.7% from a year earlier and hours worked were down about 3%. Jobs added also fell 1.5% from August to September, which Homebase called a mixed signal on whether the hiring slowdown is bottoming out.
That combination matters. Hiring can turn positive against a weak year-earlier month while the overall number of workers and the hours they work remain below prior-year levels. Homebase described the September data as “evidence that hiring may be stabilizing on Main Street even as employee churn increases.”
The churn is visible in the turnover measure. Jobs archived from employee rosters, Homebase’s turnover measure, were up 6.5% from a year ago, following a 10.7% year-over-year increase in August. Churn remains elevated even as hiring improves.
What Homebase is measuring
The report is built from timesheet and payroll records rather than a survey. Homebase’s methodology says the dataset covers more than 100,000 businesses and about 2 million hourly employees active on its platform in September. Its hiring measure tracks jobs added to official employee rosters, and a month runs from the 28th of the prior month to the 27th of the current one.
The data describe Homebase’s own customers, hourly Main Street employers; the report breaks results out for industries including food and drink, retail, beauty and wellness, caregiving, home and repair, hospitality, medical and veterinary, and entertainment. They are not a statistical sample of all U.S. small businesses, and they are not comparable with the federal payroll survey or with other private payroll measures that cover different employers.
Why hiring teams should care
For small employers, the first positive year-over-year hiring reading in nearly two years is more useful as a possible turning point than as evidence that labor demand is strong. The continued declines in employees working and hours suggest staffing remains restrained.
For job seekers in hourly service work, the result suggests small-business hiring may be less negative than it was earlier this year, but opportunities will still vary sharply by industry and metro.
The next test is whether October hiring stays positive year over year and whether employees working and hours stop declining. Homebase’s October report is scheduled for November 4. One positive comparison can mark a bottom; several months would be stronger evidence of a change in trend.
Sources
- Homebase, Main Street Health Report — September 2026. https://www.joinhomebase.com/data/september-2026-main-street-health-report
- Homebase, Main Street Health Report, September 2026 (PDF, including methodology). https://www.joinhomebase.com/files/data/september-2026-main-street-health-report.pdf
Featured photo: A trainer mentors an intern before service at Café Reconcile, a New Orleans restaurant that runs a youth workforce-training program, in February 2023. Representative image of hourly restaurant work; the restaurant is not identified as a Homebase customer. Photo: U.S. Department of Agriculture, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain). Cropped from the original.
