This chapter explores the current state of the retail industry and the difficulties encountered by retail workers. It highlights issues such as low pay, customer service problems, and challenges intensified by the pandemic. The chapter also discusses strategies employed by retailers to attract customers and improve working conditions.
Retail work has always been hard – long hours and weekend shifts on your feet, a lower pay scale and dealing with disgruntled customers. But in our post-pandemic economy, those issues have only been amplified with shoppers behaving badly and wages not keeping up with inflation, while employees take on ever-expanding roles. As a result, many workers are deciding the job just isn’t worth it.
Bloomberg’s Devin Leonard and Rebecca Greenfield explain the decline of retail workers’ sense of value and respect that is leading them to quit in droves. And retail reporter Olivia Rockeman talks about the broader challenges facing brick and mortar stores as they try to compete with growing online sales.
Read more: US Retail Workers Are Fed Up and Quitting at Record Rates
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