Netchex Dealership Workforce Report, 2026

Real dealership workforce data, straight from payroll.

This isn’t a survey. It’s twelve months of payroll, HR and time clock records from 1,238 dealerships: more than 100,000 employees paid and 2.5 million punches in a single month. Here’s what the records show about turnover, overtime, pay mix and back-office work.

Download the report (PDF) See the findings

Netchex Dealership Workforce Report overview: 1,000+ dealerships, 100K+ employees paid, 2.5M+ time clock punches in a month, and four headline findings

What the records show

Four numbers worth knowing.

Each one comes from the same set of Netchex dealership clients, measured over the 12 months ending September 30, 2026. Jump to the one you care about.

32%

of new hires are gone within 90 days

Turnover

56%

of lot and detail employees work overtime in a year

Overtime

59%

of a salesperson’s pay is commission and bonus, on average

Pay mix

13.4%

of time clock punches are added or fixed by someone else

Time clock

Finding 1: Turnover

Nearly 1 in 3 new hires is gone in 90 days.

Of 22,615 people hired between October 2025 and June 2026, about 7,200 were gone before day 91. Each one is a hire you paid to find, onboard and train. And the churn isn’t spread evenly.

Sales turnover runs 84.7% a year, the highest of any role. Lot and detail is next at 54.2%.
Service advisors (47.6%) and technicians (46.8%) leave at almost the same rate.
At least 4 in 10 new salespeople are gone within 90 days.
Management is the steadiest group at 28.9%. That still means more than 1 in 4 managers leaves in a year.

How Netchex helpsOnboarding to start the first 90 days right, comp benchmarking to check pay against the market, and rewards and recognition for the people who stay.

What does turnover cost you?

Infographic: 32% of dealership new hires are gone within 90 days, with annual turnover by role from sales at 84.7% to management at 28.9% — Annual turnover by role. Role rows cover about two-thirds of employees.

Finding 2: Overtime

More than half of lot and office employees work overtime. On the sales floor, almost none do.

Overtime lives in the hourly roles. Commission-paid roles almost never log it. If you manage labor cost across the whole store, those two groups need different eyes on them.

Office 63%, lot and detail 56%, parts 49% and technicians 38% worked overtime during the year.
Service advisors (16%), sales (13%) and F&I (3.5%) rarely do.
The extra half-time alone came to about $20.7 million across the 1,238 dealerships.

How Netchex helpsTime & Attendance shows who is clocking overtime, role by role. Payroll handles hourly pay and overtime in one run. Reporting & Insights breaks overtime and labor cost out by role.

Put your own pay mix on the table

Infographic: share of dealership employees who worked overtime during the year, by role, led by office at 63% and lot and detail at 56% — Share of employees who worked overtime during the year, by role.

Finding 3: Pay mix

There is no typical salesperson paycheck.

Commission and bonus average 59% of a salesperson’s pay. The average hides the spread: individual paychecks run from none to nearly all.

1 in 6 salespeople earns 90% or more of their pay from commission and bonus.
27.3% earn under 20% that way, including the 10.5% with no commission or bonus recorded at all.
Share who earn 60% or more from commission and bonus: F&I 53%, salespeople 43%, service advisors 36%, management 25%.

How Netchex helpsPayroll calculates commission, bonus and overtime in one run. Reporting & Insights shows pay mix by role.

See your own pay mix

Infographic: commission and bonus average 59% of a salesperson's pay, with the share of salespeople in each band of commission and bonus from 0 to 20% up to 80 to 100% — Share of salespeople by how much of their own pay is commission and bonus. People with at least $5,000 of pay in the year.

Finding 4: Back-office work

1 in 7 time clock punches is added or fixed by someone else.

In September 2026, 13.4% of punches were added or last changed by someone other than the employee. That’s 337,553 of about 2.5 million. It adds up to a lot of manager and payroll time spent chasing corrections.

74% of employees who clocked in had at least one punch fixed in the month.
Employees filed about 283,000 time-off requests in a year, roughly 4 per employee.
7.2% of payroll runs needed a manual or voided check, and 69% of dealerships had at least one.

How Netchex helpsPenny scans payroll before it runs, fixes what your rules cover and reminds people to resolve the rest. Milo answers time-off questions from your policy, submits requests and schedule changes, and sends reminders. Time & Attendance puts every punch in one place to review and approve.

See what your own numbers say

Infographic: 13.4% of dealership time clock punches are added or fixed by someone else, 74% of employees had a punch fixed in a month, 283,000 time-off requests a year, and 7.2% of payroll runs needed a manual or voided check — “Fixed” counts punches whose latest change was made by another person, so it understates total editing.

How we measured

Where the numbers come from.

All figures are aggregate Netchex client data. No individual dealership or employee is identified.

Who’s in the data

1,238 Netchex dealership clients that were live for the full 12 months ending September 30, 2026. About 100,300 employees were paid during the year.

What it isn’t

It isn’t a random sample of U.S. dealerships. It describes the dealerships Netchex serves, so read it as a picture of them rather than the whole industry.

Roles and 90-day figures

Roles come from paycheck job titles and cover about two-thirds of employees. The 90-day figure covers 22,615 hires made October 2025 to June 2026. Role-level 90-day rates are floors.

Time clock and time off

Punch figures cover September 2026 across 1,127 clients. Time-off and payroll-run figures cover the 12 months. Turnover excludes transfers within a dealer group.

FAQ

Questions about the dealership data.

Where does the dealership turnover data come from?

It comes from Netchex’s own payroll, HR and time clock records for 1,238 dealership clients, measured over the 12 months ending September 30, 2026. It’s aggregate data, and no individual dealership or employee is identified.

What is the turnover rate for dealership employees?

Across the dealerships in this data, turnover runs about 49% a year. It varies a lot by role: 84.7% for salespeople, 54.2% for lot and detail, 46.8% for technicians and 28.9% for management.

Does this represent every dealership in the U.S.?

No. It’s a picture of the dealerships Netchex serves, not a random sample of the industry. It’s still a large base: 1,238 dealerships and more than 100,000 employees paid in the year.

What does “fixed by someone else” mean for a time clock punch?

It counts punches whose latest change was made by another person, such as a manager adding a missed punch. Because it only looks at the latest change, it understates how often punches are edited in total.

Why do the role figures cover only part of the workforce?

Roles come from paycheck job titles. About a quarter of employees have no usable title and a few have titles outside the main groups, so the role rows cover roughly two-thirds of employees. Company-wide figures use everyone.

Can Netchex help bring these numbers down at my dealership?

Netchex helps with the work behind them: onboarding for the first 90 days, time and attendance review, payroll that handles commission and overtime in one run, and AI teammates that catch problems before payroll runs. A demo is the fastest way to see how it fits your stores.