Q: I went to Walmart the other day and was surprised that there was only one human cashier on duty. This forced shoppers to choose between waiting on her long line, or stepping over to the many available self-checkout registers. I chose the human and when I commented on the situation to her, she said she was just happy to have a job.

This made me curious about job automation, so, how many cashier jobs have been lost so far?

A: Good question, I’ve wondered about it myself. Here’s what I found: according to NBC news, there are about 3 million cashier jobs in the US. About 74% of those are held by women. Over the last five years about 50 thousand of these jobs have been lost to automation.

This is actually only about a 1.5% loss, which is a lot less than I had anticipated. In spite of the fact that self-checkouts apparently increase the amount of merchandise that’s stolen, their presence is expected to continue to grow.   But fear not, I doubt self-checkouts will ever completely replace human cashiers and here’s why:

Customers don’t like it. It’s an imposition. The retailer is not only doing away with someone’s job, they are asking the customer to DO that job: Scan their own items, weight their own produce, and bag their own purchases. If you’re tired after a long day and stop for groceries after work, do you really want to check yourself out?

Don’t get me wrong, if I only have a few toiletries items, the self-checkout is a nice option. But if I’m purchasing produce (or anything that needs to be weighed), I simply don’t think it’s my job to do that.

Cashier jobs are everywhere. While it makes sense for big box stores to install self-checkout registers, the majority of cashier jobs are based in smaller scale stores. Think about convenience stores, hardware stores, shops and restaurants where it would make no sense to have self-checkouts.

The way I see it, the bigger picture for job automation is not just “which jobs are going completely away”, but rather which parts of everyone’s jobs will be automated. The changes are more incremental. We now dispense our own drinks at McDonalds, get our cash out of the ATM machine, and pump our own gas. If you remember, each of those were part of someone’s job. Once upon a time.

©Copyright Eva Del Rio

Eva Del Rio is creator of HR Box™ – tools for small businesses and startups. Send questions to Eva@evadelrio.com