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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.
Existing self-checkout kiosks at major retail outlets already handle cash perfectly fine.
In other words this is just an opinion. They could or they may not.
It is opinion based on an extrapolation of current trends. Retail employment is dropping steadily, and there is no reason to believe that will stop or reverse. Stores are replacing human workers with kiosks and automation, while the stores themselves are being replaced by Amazon. Per unit of sales, physical stores employ three times as many people as Amazon (although that doesn't include the delivery drivers), and Amazon is also automating.
From the 1900s: If farm tractors and combines replace dozens of farm workers, how do we teach people how to work?
Guess what, though farm work has dropped from 70% of the labor force to under 2%, we still managed to find things to do, including entry-level jobs. If the job of cashier takes the same path, we will again find new things for our teenage workers to do.
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
Don't blame the cashier for that, blame the upper store management. Think wells fargo and what happened with the fake accounts so the peons could keep their job. If you were a cashier, and the boss told it has been commanded, you shall push store credit cards or you shall be fired, would you push or be fired? The big stores have demanded this kind of behavior.