A financial service firm, Cornerstone Capital Group has found in a study that between 6 million to 7.5 million existing jobs are at risk of being replaced over the course of the next 10 years by some form of automation. The figure represents 38 per cent of the current retail work force of 16 million workers.
According to CNN, retail could actually lose a greater proportion of jobs to automation than manufacturing. The study cleared that it doesn’t mean that robots will be roving the aisles of local department store chatting with customers but might replace cashiers, a shift that will likely eliminate millions of jobs.
“Cashiers are considered one of the most easily automatable jobs in the economy,” said the report. And these job losses will hit women particularly hard, since about 73 per cent of cashiers are women.
“There will also be fewer sales jobs, as more and more consumers use in-store smartphones and touchscreen computers to find what they need. There will still be some sales people on the floor, but just not as many of them,” said John Wilson, head of research at Cornerstone.
“You’re not going to see a robot stocking shelves, at least in the near term,” Wilson said. “But technology would reduce the need for as many people to do so. More efficiency means fewer things for people to do.”
The retail industry is already undergoing cataclysmic changes, with about 3,300 store closings announced so far this year, according to Fung Global Retail & Technology, a retail think tank. But automation will drive more job losses than store closings in the next decade, Wilson said.
“Store closings have to do with overbuilding and e-commerce,” Wilson said. “But going forward, job losses will really be about automation.”
