Hourly Jobs

Universal Studios has spent the last decade transforming from Disney’s scrappy Florida competitor into a full-blown theme park powerhouse — and in May 2025, it crossed a threshold. Epic Universe, the company’s first brand-new Orlando gate in more than a quarter century, opened with five immersive lands and a hiring push that pulled in thousands of new team members. Between the U.S. parks, Japan, Singapore, and Beijing, Universal now employs tens of thousands of hourly workers under Comcast/NBCUniversal. ...

Introduction In-N-Out Burger is one of the most unusual brands in American fast food — a privately held, family-owned chain that has been making the same short menu of burgers, fries, and shakes the same way since 1948, and that routinely shows up near the top of every “best places to work” list in the quick-service industry. For a job category often associated with low pay, thin benefits, and high turnover, In-N-Out stands out so sharply that it has become a reference point whenever people argue about what fast food work could look like if operators actually invested in their crews. ...

Introduction ALDI has quietly become one of the most talked-about grocery employers in the United States. The German-founded discount chain is in the middle of its largest-ever U.S. expansion — opening more than 180 new stores in 2026 alone, pushing its national footprint toward 2,800 locations on its way to 3,200 by 2028. Every one of those stores runs on a small crew of multi-role workers known as store associates, and the job is unlike almost anything else in grocery retail. ...

Introduction Walk up to any Home Depot on a Saturday in April and the first person a customer sees is not a cashier or a department specialist — it is the lot associate, the one in the orange apron pushing a train of twenty shopping carts across a packed parking lot, strapping 2x4s onto a contractor’s pickup, or dragging a pallet of 40-pound mulch bags out to a minivan. The lot associate role, also known as lot attendant, is the outdoor support backbone of a Home Depot store and one of the most consistently open entry-level positions the company posts. ...

Starbucks is the single largest specialty coffee employer in the United States. The company operated around 17,000 locations in the U.S. at the start of 2026 and employs roughly 200,000 U.S. partners — the brand’s internal term for employees. For an entire generation of American workers, the green apron has been a first job, a college job, or a career. For 2026, the role has changed in meaningful ways: pay has climbed, a new quarterly bonus is rolling out in July, the ASU tuition program remains one of the most generous in American hourly work, and the 600-plus unionized stores under Starbucks Workers United are finally back at the bargaining table. ...

McDonald’s is the largest quick-service restaurant employer in the United States, with more than 13,000 locations and over 800,000 workers wearing a crew uniform on any given day. Globally, the system runs more than 40,000 restaurants and employs over 2 million people. For a huge share of Americans, the first paycheck of their life is signed — figuratively — by Ronald McDonald. That fact alone makes “working at McDonald’s” one of the most searched job topics in the country every year, and 2026 is no exception. ...