Good news: Bonuses were bigger this year for retail workers

End-of-year bonuses are a mixed bag, seeing as it’s great to get a bump in December, until it settles in that you’ve not had more than a cost-of-living raise for years. And when it comes to the retail sector, here’s some mixed-bag data about 2024’s end-of-year bonuses: They were bigger than the year before, but a smaller percentage of the workforce got them.

The average December bonus for retail employees in 2024 was $1,601, up from $1,487 in 2023, an increase of 8%, according to data from Gusto, a payroll and benefits platform. However, the portion of employees who collected the bonus was slightly lower, from 17.63% of the workforce in 2024 to 17.4% in 2023. (If you’re wondering about how that breaks down from someone working the register to someone gallivanting at retail conferences, 71% of those bonus earners were hourly workers and 29% were salaried.)

Portion control: Ditto for Gusto’s food and beverage category, which according to the company is composed overwhelmingly (97%) of a combination of restaurants, bars, and snack bars, with the remainder (3%) being food manufacturers.

Those food handlers, who may soon be exempt from taxes on their tips, collected an average bonus of $480 in 2024, just $8 more than 2023’s $472, a 2% increase. But here, as they say in Cajun restaurants, is the dry rub: 6.7% of those workers collected a bonus in December, compared to 7.2% the previous year.

On a personal note (admit it: you’re obsessed with me), while the percentage of communications workers who got bonuses this year was slightly down, the haul was way up, climbing from $4,206 in 2023 to $5,134 in 2024. So drinks are on me Erin!