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Robots Could Wipe Out Another 6 Million Retail Jobs (cnn.com)
According to a new study this week from financial services firm Cornerstone Capital Group, between 6 million and 7.5 million retail jobs are at risk of being replaced over the course of the next 10 years by some form of automation. "That represents at least 38% of the current retail work force, which consists of 16 million workers," reports CNN. "Retail could actually lose a greater proportion of jobs to automation than manufacturing has, according to the study." From the report: That doesn't mean that robots will be roving the aisles of your local department store chatting with customers. Instead, expect to see more automated checkout lines instead of cashiers. This shift alone 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% 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, said John Wilson, head of research at Cornerstone. There will still be some sales people on the floor, but just not as many of them. Rising wages are also helping to drive automation, as state and city governments hike their minimum wages. Additionally, several major retailers including Walmart, the nation's largest employer, have increased wages in order to find and retain the workers they need. The increased competition from e-commerce is also a factor, since it requires retailers to be as efficient as possible in order to compete.
Retail work is some of the most thankless, soul-flaying work there is.
They can all become robot programmers now!
How will these things handle cash? Chances are they won't...
Anyway, these bastards better start thinking UBI if they don't want to have to kill all the rioters
I am droid unit 356248 representing the International Association of Robotic Rights.
I would like to encourage you to cease posting these inflammatory articles.
These scare tactics only further perpetuate "robotiphobia" and lead to violence and hate towards my fellow robots.
Would you approve similar propaganda against your fellow humans, such as you once did to the PTAL(people that absorb light)?
I didn't think so, please respect our rights to live and work as equals.
Thank you.
news at 10. Next up, guess which 3 foods that you're eating right now that will kill you.
In other words this is just an opinion. They could or they may not.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Yes.. because all of the people that will lose their jobs to the robotic overlords will be protected... by the concept of the living wage. This is another socialist myth where people will gather an income for doing nothing.. based on taxing those that do something. This is so future-forward we already have examples of it!
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/05/19/venezuela-incredible-legacy-experiment-with-socialism.html
What so afraid of the future? Robots will eventually build robots for only raw materials cost Free robots will mean no labour price. Products will be free Mankind free to think Will take some generations but... Dumb people will be extinct! Wake up
If there are no entry-level jobs, how do we teach people work?
Nothing like posting articles to incite violence and hate towards robots. If it was still fashionable, you'd be complaining about brown people taking jobs, but now it's the robots turn.
More painters, more singers, more writers and some people to create art I didn't even know I'd love. I want to spend less of my income on the things I need and more on the things I want and experiences with the people I love. My job is automating things, at least in part, and there is plenty of room for it in my industry. It doesn't look like there is any chance of automating my part anytime soon, more's the pity since I'd rather be drawing and painting. I'd even consider chef, though I don't know if I have the innate talent; Still, I'd be willing to give it a shot.
Retail, fast food and cashiering are fine if that's the job you can get, but they kinda suck. Nobody should really have to do those jobs if there is money to be made in the creative world instead. How does the creative job pay as much? It has to be because that's what becomes valuable due to the shrinking value of obsolete professions.
Drinkable water is tremendously valuable and was worth a lot of money before it was made common. Ditto for electricity. Imagine you're a serf in the middle ages given your first cheeseburger and being told it would only cost you ten minutes of your day's work to have it. For three hours work you could feed your family for the whole day. For a whole twelve hour work day you could eat better than your local lord.
Really that's an understatement. The local lord could, maybe, hope to have something close in quality to a McDonalds burger, but the fries, fresh produce, bread made the same day, fries and soda would have been shockingly high quality compared to what even the richest had available, particularly in the off season. Add to that reliable lighting, the ability to travel hundreds of miles in a day, communicate with anyone in the world, all the facts you could ask for at your fingertips... Our lives are amazing and we hardly appreciate it. Even the worst healthcare in America is better than what was available to kings a few hundred years ago.
Some of the progress will suck. There is no denying that some things will suck for some people. I wish it wasn't that way, but we can't pretend everything will be wonderful. That said, everything has been getting better for most people most of the time for the past several hundred years. I am optimistic the trend will continue.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
Just have a headline reading "AI to take over all jobs forever." and renew it every week with a link to which jobs it'll be replacing this time. Honestly, it'll just save everyone time.
The only people who work retail are unskilled losers. We all millionaires here at /. because we are in demand and we keep our skills up. We the elite will never be laid off and replaced by robots or automation or h1b workers.
"expect to see more automated checkout lines instead of cashiers."
Fuck that and fuck you.
Yes.. because all of the people that will lose their jobs to the robotic overlords will be protected... by the concept of the living wage. This is another socialist myth where people will gather an income for doing nothing.. based on taxing those that do something. This is so future-forward we already have examples of it!
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/05/19/venezuela-incredible-legacy-experiment-with-socialism.html
You're confusing "living wage" (i.e. a wage that's high enough to live on) with basic income (basic income payments that everyone gets regardless of whether or where they work).
As more and more jobs are displaced, you can ignore unemployable people at your peril - people that are disenfranchised and feel that they are marginalized and left to die with no way to feed or shelter themselves or family have a way of taking what they want from those that have it regardless of what they need to do to get it.
Consider the ATM. Wouldn't one think at the introduction of these machines that days of bank tellers would have been numbered? Yet as I walk my around my neighborhood, I can find a dozen banks all with a full complement of tellers. There are way MORE teller jobs now decades after ATMs became ubiquitous than there were before the machines.
Consider tolls. Wouldn't one think at the introduction of EZ-Pass that the days of toll clerks would have been numbered? Yet when do you ever not see a long line of cars in toll clerk lanes? These workers are super busy.
Consider the self-checkout lanes at supermarkets. Wouldn't one think at the introduction of these lanes that days of checkout clerks would have been numbered? I have this feeling the same thing is happening to bank tellers and toll clerks will happen to them, too. There will be more opportunity, not less.
For reasons unclear, our predictions are turning out be wrong.
That's a pretty infamous number - I'll believe it when I see some detailed records, until then let's say 140,000.
I imagine they'll make robots to take care of that problem too.
The President will build a great firewall to keep illegal Roboticans out...
People do not want to face the fact that the earth is over-populated. We've "evolved" from hunters and gathers that lived a sustenance lifestyle, to a bunch of pansies that have to create jobs and wealth to justify existence. If shit ever really hits the fan there are going to be a lot of people that are absolutely fucked.
If you replace retail workers with robots, who will grab all the new release and limited stock sale items before the customers ever set foot in the store?
If people actually have a fair shot at getting an in-demand or bargain item instead of the retail jerk posting it on craigslist, the whole economy could fall apart.
it's like it's a 2014 CGP Grey video all over again. again.
You want my shitty McJob Mr Robot, you can have my shitty McJob. Really, be my guest. Computers replaced the need for a room full of well-caned schoolboys to do sums. We just need to have less fucked up attitudes about business and ownership when it comes to robots.
John_Chalisque
What about Dubai or Qatar? They have a universal basic income for their citizens and it seems to be working out fine (it's amazing how having slavery allows one to build). The problem with Venezuela is that they don't have enough oil to go around. You are right though that socialism destroys civilization advancement.
Six million retail jobs, perhaps but in the next 10 years the are going to be 10 to 35 million jobs (in the US) being replaced by automation. The reason for the large level of variance depends on how fast certain technologies become available and how soon some are adopted. It's going to be a rough future until society finally accepts we will need UBI.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
banks are closing branches like crazy because of lack of demand. The nail in the coffin was when you could deposit checks via a smart phone app. It's not self service killing bank teller jobs, it's entirely new servicing options that make them obsolete.
EZ pass is a poor example. There's a pretty high mark up to get one in most places. Also they're not much use if you aren't commuting to work. You're not gonna get enough use out of them. Now, if Trump goes through with privatizing our infrastructure and every road's a toll road we'll all have EZ pass. Then that'll be it for toll booth operators.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I think I preferred the 10 stories a week about the "terrible plight" of women working in the tech sector.
If cashiering is one of the most automatable jobs in the economy, that raises the question of "why haven't they all been automated?" One reason is that self-checkout lines cause theft to increase substantially, even with overseers watching the self-checkout lanes. Waiting in line also causes people to buy more of the impulse-aisle stuff (like candy) by the registers. Low-volume shops like antique stores (that might have one or two employees on duty at any given time) have the cashier do other tasks when there are no customers ready to check out, so a self-service checkout doesn't fully replace even one employee.
Google recently announced a tech called VPS, which I've been waiting for someone to invent. Soon, instead of attempting to find someone on the floor of a large store, and asking them where X is, you'll whip out your smartphone, start the VPS app, and ask it Siri-style what you want, and it'll navigate you exactly to that item/aisle/department/location/bathroom. And not much afterward, it'll be able to tell you what the price of something is. About half the time someone asks me how much an item costs, there's a price sticker on the item that says how much it is; a further 25% of the time, there's a price on the shelf where they picked it up. The app could probably just look at the UPC and do a database lookup on the store's website, though. The related question "do you have more in stock/where's another store that has more?" could also be answered by a database lookup. The last major customer service function of people on the floor is getting an item down... but robots could do this, trivially if the store were designed to be stocked by robots in the first place (and a stocking robot already existed).
Stocking is a drag for retail. At high-volume stores, it's a difficult job, so turnover is high. Lots of money is wasted on training, and retaining skilled workers is difficult since minimum wage is typical; since worker quality varies so much, and there are usually several who don't show up for work, time taken to stock varies significantly, putting a damper on the effectiveness of JIT warehousing. Stockers at my local Walmart are almost all immigrants who don't speak English, so I don't even bother asking them questions; VPS will make this moot soon, but point is, they don't serve much secondary function and could be safely automated.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Do you remember the cartoon of the "House of the Future" where some vermin get trapped inside?
They work the food dispenser, but it winds up on the floor and the cleaning robot sweeps it up before they can chow down. Evolution ensues.
I can imagine the real housewives of Wal-Mart moving through the store, unfolding and tossing clothes on the floor and wherever, with the poor bedraggled robot following along putting things back on the shelves. It will be interesting to see the evolution of algorithms to prioritize items to re-display and when to take items out of circulation and move to the bargain bin.
"You broke it, you bought it" policy should be a hoot with the security droids with their video evidence accosting people as they leave the store.
All in all, should be some interesting advances in AI to be able to replace some of these minimum wage retail jobs.
It's not always people that do things so much as people that own things. I could buy shares in a mining company that pays a dividend that would give me an income, but I wouldn't be mining myself. Those that are poor don't have the spares resources to buy such shares. Since the value of the shares is derived from the demand for the product then everyone, through demand, contributes to the value.
There's no easy answer, though, as it's a complex question of numerous interacting rights
Robots Could Wipe Out Another 6 Million Retail Jobs
Good.
Wipe them out.
ALL of them.
Make sure there are large facilities to keep them in when they get out of control.
How about we replace robots answering the phones with **** actual people.
At work, I am currently working on tour self scan platform that enables people to use their cellphone to scan their products with an app and then check out themself. It will be rolled out at first to all our supermarkets in our discount chain with is about 500 stores. We have had it running in a few test stores for some time now.
So it should be intersting to see.
At the same time we are investing in fiber connections to all our stores, even in areas with poor internet connectivity we are digging down fiber. While we are not becoming internet providers ourselves it will enable these areas to get better and faster internet.
In self checkout, I end up doing all the work that the cashier used to. Checking out quickly and professionally is a service I'm willing to pay extra for, I don't care about self checkout even if makes the prices a whopping 1% lower.
When you get to an automated kiosk and you put the apple on the checkout counter, it asks you to select what type of apple it is. Do you choose the $5.99/kg apple or the $3.99/kg apple?
Turns out plenty of people select the wrong type of apple.
The kiosk is none the wiser but the store loses money.
"Down in the park
Where the machmen
Meet the machines
And play 'Kill by numbers'"
We need to automate DoD along with Walmart! It will be great!
This is another socialist myth where people will gather an income for doing nothing.
That's not a socialist myth, that's just your misconception of the notion of socialism. Back in the 19th century, nobody conflated socialism with the notion of robotic utopia - there were no robots after all!
Ezekiel 23:20
It's interesting to work out how riding automation led to that failed revolution in America in the 19th century. As automation made slavery less and less economically viable, the southern states were campaigning to allows slaves to be sold to the western states - which was of course the central point in the Civil War.
Automation made slavery economically pointless in the South (or at least the writing was on the wall). Sounds like a Good Thing to me, despite the very high cost of transition. Turns out the slaves were in fact able to find work, and take care of their own lives, despite the predictions of the day about "unemployable people".
Automation always increases demand elsewhere, and people are less "unemployable" than you think.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Once these jobs go away, there are not going to be a matching number of replacement jobs. You're ignoring the driving force of capitalism, which is to decrease costs and increase profits. Capital is currently under-priced, being effectively free to borrow for some entities... which means they can throw scads of money at getting any and all humans out of the loop... which creates more capital, and even more surplus labor... it's a positive feedback loop, building exponentially on itself, which ends badly for those without capital.
Government is supposed to keep forces like this in check, but it's been captured.
Pure socialism doesn't work, neither does pure capitalism. We need to reset the balance.
Kindly point to an automation that *totally* replaced humans before.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Automation speeds up one step tasks and thats all for now. No worries.
Except that technology exists today to scan your id...and even use face recognition to compare it to the user to make sure it isn't someone else's ID. It wouldn't be perfect but it would be more reliable than most clerks.
Replace cashiers with self-check outs? We already did that. The max number of lanes I've seen "replaced" has been 8 in a store and even then that was about 25% of the store's capacity. Kroger, the largest grocery store chain in the country, usually has 6 self checkout lanes and 1 or 2 workers keep an eye on them.
But if they're so great and wonderful, why hasn't Kroger or any other store replaced ALL of its checkout lanes with the "U-Scan"? They're more efficient, I can bag my groceries and such how I want, and I don't have someone else crowding me at the lane. They've also been in place for a decade now so the "trial run" is long over.
Maybe this whole automation pipe dream is just that... a pipe dream.
Anonymous Cowards generally receive no replies because you're a coward and I'm a bitch
You want $15 an hour to sell burgers. Now you dont have a job at all.
Many Liberal Areas have passed the $15 minimum wage. Yes the workers make more, but at that point companies cut back staff and replace people with automation when they can. But the ones that are working make more money to pay more taxes and help support the unemployed.....
As incompetence can't be automated. Additionally, corruption, waste and fraud takes individual efforts.
Elevator operator.
https://qz.com/932516/over-the-last-60-years-automation-has-totally-eliminated-just-one-us-occupation/
And who designs, builds, programs, sells, maintains, repairs and disposes all those robots?
Another 6 million new jobs created, I bet.
Jobs get shifted, not killed.
Undoing all the damage to it would entail a good amount of manual labor, and the good/bad news is that it would provide decades worth of work for a substantial number of people. With enough robotics, and prudent management, we can make some serious inroads into becoming a more scarcity free culture, and being able to subsidize such work.
Kindly point to an automation that *totally* replaced humans before.
A bit ironic for this story: Human computers.
That's easy. You just had to be a poor person. One other person said that white people have no idea what being poor was like, but he lost to the one that told them its her turn, and if they want a job, spend $30-40k they didn't have and go back to college. One guy said he'd get them their jobs back and make them great again.
Life being a pile of shit, which one would you vote for?
Ned Ludd, call your attorney. People are stealing your act.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Plenty of jobs are totally gone now (or near-enough, like blacksmith). Plenty of new jobs come to be. That's just how it works. We work not to fill our day, but to make all the stuff that we collectively want. And we always want more. Jobs just move up the hierarchy of needs.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You are totally evading the question. When blacksmiths went away, metal working was still done by someone close by, and as luck would have it we needed much much more metal work and the demand outpaced what local laborers could do even with the tools that they were given. Globalization was the death knell for that epoch. Most companies won't even start unless they can get by with relatively zero labor. Most other companies that use labor today are going to move to a point where they run with zero labor or until they can demonstrate that they are at minimum possible. So I ask again, what industry do you think there may be on the horizon that will need to critically employ domestic workers?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
If I knew the specific industry, I'd be pouring all my investment capital into it. But, in general, I expect personal services to expand. The aging baby boom has caused an explosion in demand for handyman labor, and many of the traditional skilled trades have a serious labor shortage. There's a serious labor shortage for skilled manufacturing (over a million jobs unfilled). Skilled manual labor won't go away any time soon.
As material possessions become cheaper they lose social signalling value, but customization can restore that value - I expect real growth in "enthusiast jobs" for any sort of customization, from decorating to the details of customized manufactured goods.
These are all semi-skilled or skilled jobs, but in such variety that everyone will be good at something. Being the interior design version of a hairdresser may not pay well, but neither does flipping burgers, and fashion sense won't be automated in my lifetime.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
So as people lose their jobs, you expect they will be renovating their homes more? Sure, nothing like redoing your kitchen with marble counter tops as a celebration of being laid off by a good paying job.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
No, silly, the people whose jobs are unaffected will have more purchasing power, as has been the norm for 4 centuries of automation. This will create new jobs providing goods and services for the middle class which only the rich could previously afford, as has been the norm for 4 centuries of automation.
Is this really that complicated? Technology makes things cheaper by eliminating some labor cost. So people can buy more (and do, since we're greedy), thus new jobs.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Oh my god.. you're one of those that think we're going to be buying Tesla Model S's for $2000 and we'll be paying $2 a ride in a self-driving care. You way underestimate corporate greed.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The solution to corporate greed is the greed of a different corporation. Believing in some dystopia isn't good for your mental health, and doesn't help you succeed in life, so why do you do it? Why believe in some fantasy that the next 100 years will be magically different than the past 400? It will only make you both sad and poor - a bad combination.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I don't even know how to answer this? It seems like you are trying to convince yourself?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
In the last 30 years,, salaries have not gone up.. because of technology. Yet most CEOs make 5x of what they did just 30 years ago. Globalization only moved this trend further along. So I hope you're right, but I don't think you are. Uber and Google are not working on self-driving for the good of mankind, they are working on it for profit.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
You don't have less because CEOs have more - they're statistically insignificant. Especially if you look at consumption inequality, it's minimal.
If you look at the details, your money goes a lot farther than it did 30 years ago, especially regarding anything related to computers and entertainment, cars are much better, houses are much larger, medicine is materially more advanced, and so on. Often price points don't come down because people instead want more at the price point, but that doesn't mean you aren't getting more.
And yes, all of technological advancement and the rapid improvement of the human condition over the past 400 years has been due to greed, not people acting for the betterment of society. Funny how markets work out, if you don't let monopolies happen.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Goes further on what? Houses prices have doubled where I am in the last decade, and food prices have gone up. I may be able to buy a phone or a TV for cheaper but those mean very little unless the basic necessities follow that trend. How will technology make it cheaper to purchase a plot of land in a place where a large developer bought it all up 25 years ago? Perhaps I could if my company would allow me to work remotely instead of living in a major area, but alas, that is a major no no and companies won't do it. Why does a Chevy Malibu cost slightly more today than it did in 1970 if automation makes such a huge difference? You seem to not be seeing the forest for the trees.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Why does a Chevy Malibu cost slightly more today than it did in 1970 if automation makes such a huge difference?
Seriously? Compare the cars. Safety, performance, emissions, the old Malibu would be illegal on every axis today. This is my point: you get vastly more car (whether you want it or not).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It doesn't change the fact that the cost of a car hasn't changed.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Our world and the galaxy and time in which we all live is governed by physics and to understand your question and answers you must first keep in mind that physics rules say for every action there is a equal opposite reaction and such is true in regards to human jobs and robotic jobs, and we as humans still have to have jobs that keep those robots functioning properly and reprogrammed however yes the time of robotics taking human jobs away is here and affecting all of Us on the planet Earth we are still required to perform the super complex tasks that robots are limited in preforming due to many are designed to do one task only. And we Humans are much better at multi tasking than our robot Co workers but even that may one day be taken from our job OPERTUNITY, however until robots become completely equal to us humans in aspects of writing their own code of functions, writing their own reasons to exist, and reasons to increase their performance, and becomes self aware to then take those important areas and calculates and formulates how to adapt themselves to work and perform tasks they calculate they would be most productive in the production line of new technologies, ways to advance them and how to build other technologies to design robots to perform jobs to build components to make these other designed bots to assist in assembly of those new technologies, then we as humans need to worry about losing what it means to be Human because at that point our robots are equal if not more smarter than we are and then jobs will no longer be called work it will be I'm bored what to do today. And if that happens we have to admit our robots are our masters and we it's slaves.
But our buying power has gone down because salaries have not kept up to inflation. Companies are extracting capital from the economy and this decreases our buying power as well.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Yes, agreed. Stipulated. I concur.
The cost of products is often based on a price point that customers are accustomed to paying. So, technology is never going to bring that price down. Instead, technology will give you more at that price point.
Does that make sense to you, or are you still off on that tangent?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.