2017 INDEX	The robots are coming
A nation of shopkeepers no more? #By Jonathan Brind
There are many, I was one, who wanted nothing to do with the automated tills introduced by supermarkets some years ago. This should be a lesson those who predict that automated shopping will never take off, should take to heart. According to the Office for National Statistics there are 31.9m employed with 1.6m registering as unemployed. By far the biggest sector, more than manufacturing and construction combined, is retail and the motor trade: in other words the high street. Add to this estate agents (a further 585,000 jobs whose future must be put into question by online home selling services) and the scale of the sector becomes apparent. One in six people who have a job, work in retailing.
For several years now there has been a full frontal assault on the retail sector in the shape of online shopping, the likes of Amazon and Ebay. Totally automated shopping may, ironically, save the high street since it will dramatically reduce the cost of retailing. But quite clearly the price will be the loss of millions of jobs. This may help flesh out the Bank of England prediction that technology will cost 15 million (one in two) jobs in the UK.
Source: Labour Force Survey in Sept-Nov 2016.