End of the " Checkout Chick " !

The future is right before our eyes whenever we shop at a Coles or Woolworths supermarket.   We have the choice of passing our grocery purchases through the hands of a checkout assistant who uses a scanner to identify and price each item. This same assistant packs our purchase into carry bags and supervises our payment choice, giving change if we pay with cash or helping us navigate a card payment through the machine.

We also have the option in those same stores of processing the items purchased through a machine without human help.  Swipe each item across the machines scanner and pack it into a convenient carry bag.   Payment may be cash or card and the big advantage is speed.  It removes the inconvenience of waiting in those long checkout queues.

Statistics tell us that the ratio of shoppers proffering cash steadily declines each year and is replaced by more electronic transactions.  The "  App  " has become the navigation instrument that allows us a wide freedom of choice and now Amazon, that giant American retailer is offering a completely new way of doing grocery shopping.   It is opening stores that lack any form of checkout.  Customers simply make their choice from the shelves - and walk out.  Scanners throughout the store identify each item and debit them against the customers Amazon account via an App.   These first stores are merely the forerunner of two thousand this firm is planning to open across the United States.   It seems inevitable that this form of marketing will spread to the rest of the world.

Whether you like or loathe this idea it is a harbinger of what is coming in the elimination of the vast array of low skilled jobs that absorbed a huge component of the work force.  Electronics and robotics are advancing at warp speed and the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia predicts  that forty percent of all existing jobs will disappear in the next two decades.

That is frightening when we consider the impact that could deliver on retailing employment. Already we are seeing bricks and mortar stores under stress from Online shopping and general merchandise is fast adopting a self serve approach to contain costs.   If the days of the " Checkout Chick " are now numbered, perhaps those of the vast array who serve behind counters across the entire retail spectrum are sure to follow.

Our education system is not doing well in comparison with the rest of the world.   We are a first world country churning out a mixed skill percentage which dooms the unskilled to ever decreasing job opportunities.  In the past, a significant section of the workforce was employed in what we termed the low to medium skilled sector.   Clerical and retail were a big component of that grouping.  That seems to be the skill sector that is about to join the jobless.

Strangely, we are a country that has almost a permanent class of unemployed and at the same time a desperate need to fill a vast array of unfilled job opportunities.   Bringing in the fruit and vegetable harvest is reliant on attracting overseas backpackers to do this work.    These are jobs shunned by those not prepared to move to where work is available or undertake the type of work offering.

The Australia we live in is going to become a very different place a decade or so from now.  So far we have been throwing money at the education system - with very poor results.   It is time we adopted a national curriculum and got serious about education standards.   We need to train our young people for the jobs of the future, not look to the past for opportunities that are fast disappearing.