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www.IndependentRetailer.com NEWS Retail Job Jeopardy
THE NATION’S fragile econo- my is fi nally starting to recover. However, some sectors are still shrinking. The retail sector, for example, lost 8,100 jobs between January and February. Some ob- servers worry those jobs won’t return quickly, because employees are being replaced by machines. The applications seem endless. Vending machines sell iPods, pizzas and bathing suits. Robots stock shelves and load packages. Self-service checkout machines render checkout clerks nearly ob- solete. The self-service machines are probably the ones you en- counter most, at retailers such as
Home Depot and Lowe’s. They make economic sense, as retail- ers try to save money in a tight economy. Machines don’t require health benefi ts or high salaries. According to NCR Corp., which
makes the machines, retailers can reduce the time customers wait in line by 40 percent by deploying self-checkout. They can increase the number of customers through checkout lanes by 20 percent, and can bump up revenue per hour (seven percent), by deploying em- ployees to other parts of the store to help customers. Greg Buzek, of consulting fi rm, IHL Group, says retailers can also reduce la-
bor in the front of the fl oor by 33 percent over two years by using self-checkout machines. The aver- age wage for cashiers in unionized supermarkets in California is $22 an hour, Buzek says, so redeploy- ing workers can save cash. Some technology advocates say this redeployment is a good thing, as workers can be freed up to do more valuable work. Daniel Castro, a senior analyst
with the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, estimates that
if self-service technology
was more widely adopted, the economy in the U.S. would grow
continued on page 16
10 April 2011
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