Consider this before you assume you can have a long or lucrative career in the retail industry:
Up to half of all current jobs in the retail sector are likely to vanish because of e-commerce, automation of jobs and the closing of brick-and-mortar stores.
Millions of retail jobs — as we now know them — are going the way of gas station attendants. Just as ATMs replaced many bank tellers, automated check-out stations are supplanting retail clerks.
And have you watched in-store “shoppers” who do Amazon price checks while they’re standing in the aisles? Have you noticed how many of them leave the store without making a purchase when they found savings by buying online?
But more important to the overall economy than the disappearance of mostly low-income, entry-level jobs in the check-out lane is that the retail jobs likely to remain are requiring different skill sets.
And — another big consequence — the funnel is narrowing through which retail workers are able to get promotions to better-paying, career-type jobs.
One recent analysis, based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, estimated that 7.5 million retail jobs are at risk due to computerization. That matters.
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