config/queue.php defines connections, each with a driver and named queues (default, emails). Laravel 13 2,157 ships with QUEUE_CONNECTION=database, and the skeleton migration 0001_01_01_000002_create_jobs_table already creates jobs, job_batches and failed_jobs. The other drivers are redis (phpredis 10,226 or predis/predis), sqs, beanstalkd, sync (runs at once), deferred and background (after the response), failover and null. Redis 2,763 via predis needs composer require predis/predis and REDIS_CLIENT=predis.
On MySQL 8.0.1 524 and later the database driver reserves rows with FOR UPDATE SKIP LOCKED, so workers never block each other. retry_after (90 s) is how long a reserved job may run before the store assumes its worker died (Queue Workers). after_commit holds a job until the open transaction commits, so a worker never loads a rolled-back order. New in Laravel 13, Queue::route() pins a job class to a connection and queue.