Inside the decline of sales occupations
Sales workers connect consumers to products and services. Whether proactively contacting potential customers through phone calls or text messages, making in-person demonstrations, or by being available in retail stores to answer questions and facilitate transactions, these workers drive sales activity for businesses.
While the core duties of sales workers remain the same among the various sales occupations, the future employment landscape for these workers is expected to vary by setting and type of product sold over the next 10 years. Specifically, the continued trend of e-commerce displacing brick-and-mortar retail is expected to lead to job losses for sales workers employed in the retail sector.
The majority of employment in the sales occupational group comes from just two occupations: retail salespersons and cashiers, whose combined 8.2 million jobs make up 52 percent of all US sales jobs in 2018. From 2018 to 2028, these occupations are both projected to decline; retail salespersons are projected to decline 2.3 percent and lose 101,900 jobs, while cashiers are projected to decline 3.8 percent and lose 138,700 jobs. These declines are attributable to the continued rise of online sales; when customers purchase goods online, demand for in-store sales workers declines.
The prior decade saw e-commerce’s share of total retail sales nearly triple, from 3.6 percent in 2008 to 9.9 percent in 2018. As e-commerce’s share of retail sales accelerated, from an average annual increase of 0.49 percent from 2008–15 to 0.85 percent from 2016–18, the number of newly opened brick-and-mortar stores stagnated, with near- zero (0.13 percent) growth in the number of retail establishments, and employment declined in the retail trade industry by 0.3 percent over this period. Meanwhile, employment in the transportation and warehousing industry grew 8.5 percent from 2016 to 2018, as this segment benefitted from e-commerce growth due to its role in the storage and delivery of packages.
Overall, sales occupations join production occupations and office and administrative support occupations as the only occupational groups (out of 22) projected to experience employment declines from 2018–28. While some sales jobs will remain in high demand for their ability to provide customer services that cannot be automated and to drive sales for high-value items, many others will experience employment declines due to technological replacement, primarily the continued displacement of retail sales by e-commerce.
Source: Beyond the Numbers, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
The full report is available at:
https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-9/pdf/inside-the-decline-of-sales-occupations.pdf
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