The retail trade today — jobs workplaces and future

Retail trade is one of the country's largest sectors measured by number of jobs and is part of everyone's daily life — we shop every single day. As a skilled worker in retail you are trained for a sector that always needs people but which is also in the midst of major change driven by e-commerce and technology. Here we look at where you can work and where the trade is headed.

Workplaces range broadly. You can work in a large supermarket or grocery chain in a specialty store with clothing sports electronics or building supplies in a kiosk or convenience store at a florist or in a department store's decoration department. Many retail professionals also end up behind the scenes — in the warehouse purchasing or running a web shop.

The greatest change is e-commerce. More and more sales move online and that has created a whole specialty — Digital Commerce — that is about building and optimizing web shops, doing online marketing and analysing customer data. At the same time it means the physical store must also be able to do more: click-and-collect, returns handling and an experience in the store the internet cannot provide.

Self-checkout tills digital price tags and warehouse robots take over some of the most routine tasks. But it does not remove the need for people — it shifts it. When the till runs itself there is more time for advice upselling product presentation and customer experience and new tasks emerge in keeping systems running and data up to date.

Because the industry is so large there is ongoing need for new employees — also because there is some turnover. A skilled background gives you an advantage: you can do more than the unskilled person at the checkout and you have papers on it. That makes you attractive and opens up for advancement to eg sous chef shop manager or specialist roles in procurement e-commerce or visual merchandising.

The future belongs to you, who can tie the physical and digital together, who understand numbers and customer data, and who can still give a customer a good face-to-face experience. Sustainability also fills more — from less food waste to reuse and greener operations. If you take the trade seriously, there are both jobs and career opportunities to choose from.

• 01Broad job market: grocery, specialist shop, convenience, web, warehouse
• 02E-commerce creates new jobs — especially for the Digital trade specialty.
• 03Automation moves tasks towards advice and experience
• 04Skilled status opens for sous chef, store manager, and specialist roles.