Short answer: partly, and this is one of the clearest declines in the official projections. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects cashiers to decline 6 percent between 2025 and 2035, a loss of about 200,600 positions from a 2025 base of 3,106,300, with 2025 median pay of $32,880. In absolute terms that is one of the largest projected occupational declines in the economy. It is also worth putting in proportion: a 6 percent decline over ten years leaves roughly 2.9 million cashiers in 2035. The job is being reduced, not eliminated, and the mechanism is self-checkout and payment technology far more than anything recognisable as artificial intelligence.
What Is Actually Driving the Decline
Three separate technologies get bundled together in coverage of this question, and they have very different effects.
Self-checkout is the main driver and it is not new. It shifts the scanning and payment work to the customer, and one attendant supervises several lanes. This has been reducing cashier hours per store for two decades.
Mobile and contactless payment removes cash handling, which was one of the tasks that made a trained cashier necessary. It also speeds transactions, which reduces how many lanes a store needs open.
Computer vision checkout, where cameras and sensors track what a shopper takes and charge them automatically, is the technology that most resembles AI. It works, it is expensive to install, and deployment has been considerably slower and more selective than early coverage predicted.
The order matters. Most of the decline projected through 2035 comes from the first two, which are mature, cheap and already installed. The third is the one that gets written about.
Why the Decline Is Gradual Rather Than Sudden
| Factor | Effect on cashier employment |
|---|---|
| Self-checkout retrofit cost | Already largely spent in large chains |
| Computer vision installation cost | High, limits deployment to specific formats |
| Age-restricted sales | Require staff verification by law |
| Theft and shrinkage | Unattended checkout increases losses, pushing some retailers back |
| Customer preference | A meaningful share of shoppers prefer a staffed lane |
| Small retail | Thousands of small stores where automation is uneconomic |
| Assistance and exceptions | Someone has to resolve the item that will not scan |
Two of these deserve emphasis because they have already caused reversals. Several large retailers have reduced self-checkout after finding that losses exceeded labour savings, and age verification remains a legal requirement that unattended systems cannot satisfy alone. Neither factor is likely to disappear.
BLS also published AI exposure categories alongside the 2025-35 projections, sorting occupations into Low, Moderate, High and Very high relative exposure, and states directly that exposure “does not imply job loss, productivity gains, automation probability, or wage effects.” Cashier work is a useful reminder that automation pressure often comes from ordinary hardware and self-service rather than from anything model-based.
What the remaining role looks like
The job that survives is not the job that is disappearing. A store with twelve self-checkout terminals and two staffed lanes still employs people, and their work is different from scanning.
They supervise a bank of terminals, resolve exceptions, verify age-restricted purchases, handle returns and disputes, help customers who cannot or will not use the machines, deal with attempted theft, and maintain the terminals. That is a broader role with more judgement in it, and in many stores it is combined with floor duties into a general retail assistant position.
The consequence for a worker is that the pure checkout role is contracting into something closer to customer service. That is a better job in most respects, and it requires more of the person doing it.
The Arithmetic of a Store, and Why It Sets the Pace
The clearest way to understand this projection is to look at how a retailer actually decides.
A supermarket running eight staffed lanes across opening hours might employ the equivalent of a dozen or more people on checkout across a week. Replacing four of those lanes with twelve self-checkout terminals supervised by two staff removes a meaningful share of those hours, and the equipment pays for itself over a few years.
Then the second-order effects arrive. Shrinkage rises, because unattended checkout is easier to exploit and because honest customers make more errors. Age-restricted sales require an intervention, so the supervising staff are interrupted constantly. Older customers and those with large trolleys still prefer a staffed lane, and queue complaints rise if there is only one. Terminals need maintenance and jam frequently.
The retailer’s actual saving is therefore smaller than the labour arithmetic suggested, which is why the industry has settled on a mix rather than on full automation, and why several chains reversed course after going too far. That is the mechanism behind a 6 percent decline over ten years rather than the collapse that early coverage of self-checkout predicted.
The same logic constrains computer vision checkout. It genuinely works, and it requires dense sensor installation, careful store layout and continuing maintenance. That combination makes sense in small-format, high-footfall locations and is difficult to justify in a large supermarket with thousands of similar-looking items.
What to Know Before You Draw Conclusions
The decline is real and should be planned for. Unlike most occupations covered in this series, the honest advice here is to treat the projection as a reason to act rather than as a reason for reassurance.
Retail overall is under pressure. BLS projects retail trade employment to decline slightly through 2035, losing about 27,500 jobs as e-commerce continues to limit employment in retail outlets. The sector is not growing around the shrinking role.
Adjacent roles are growing. Warehousing, delivery, and in-store fulfilment for online orders have absorbed a significant amount of retail labour. These are physically demanding and often better paid.
Format matters more than technology. Convenience stores, pharmacies and specialist retail have very different automation economics from large supermarkets. Where you work matters as much as what you do.
Customer-facing service is the durable part. Every retailer that removed staff entirely and then reversed the decision did so because customers needed help and nobody was there to give it.
Where Retail Work Is Moving
- In-store fulfilment. Picking and packing online orders from store stock is a substantial and growing category of retail employment.
- Customer service and returns. Exception handling, disputes and complex requests, all of which require judgement.
- Supervision and shift leadership. Fewer transactional staff means more need for people who can run a shift.
- Specialist retail. Anywhere the sale requires product knowledge, from pharmacy to hardware to electronics.
- Warehousing and delivery. The distribution side of retail, which has absorbed a large share of transferring workers and generally pays more than checkout roles, though the work is physically harder.
A Practical Framework If You Work in This Role
- Currently a cashier in a large chain. The most exposed position. Ask for cross-training into fulfilment, customer service or supervision now, while you are already employed and the training is free.
- Cashier in a small or specialist store. Considerably more secure, because the automation economics do not work at that scale. Build product expertise, which is what keeps small retail competitive.
- Shift supervisor or team lead. Reasonably secure, because someone has to run the floor. Adding fulfilment operations experience broadens your options substantially.
- Looking for a first job in retail. Target fulfilment, specialist retail or customer service rather than checkout, because the entry-level checkout role is the one contracting.
The test that matters: how much of your shift is scanning and taking payment, versus helping people and solving problems? The second is the part that stays, and every store has more of it than the rota suggests.
One more consideration worth naming, because it affects how urgently to act. Declines of this kind are almost never distributed evenly across a workforce. They concentrate wherever a chain refits a store, changes format or closes a location, which means an individual experiences the projection as a sudden local event rather than as a gradual national trend. Planning ahead is worth doing precisely because the warning at store level is usually short.
Common mistakes right now
- Waiting for the employer to offer cross-training rather than asking for it.
- Assuming supervision roles require a qualification, when most are filled internally from people who asked.
- Overlooking fulfilment roles because they are less visible than checkout positions.
- Treating a store closure as a personal failure rather than as a sector-wide pattern.
Building Skills That Transfer Out of the Checkout
The most useful thing anyone in this position can do is acquire a capability that is portable across employers and sectors, and the current highest-return option is basic digital and AI fluency. Retail operations, logistics and customer service roles increasingly involve software that schedules, forecasts, routes and drafts, and the people who are comfortable with it get moved into the roles that survive.
That does not mean learning to code. It means understanding what these tools do, how to direct them, where they are wrong, and how to work alongside them confidently in a customer service or operations context. A short structured course is a realistic commitment alongside shift work, and it produces something concrete: a certificate plus a genuine capability that reads well on an application for a supervisory or fulfilment role. If you want a structured starting point, explore Coursiv AI lessons and check current plan details on the official site.
FAQ
Are cashier jobs disappearing?
Is self-checkout the main cause?
Why have some retailers reduced self-checkout?
Will small shops automate too?
What should a cashier do now?
Your Next Step
Find out what other roles your employer is currently hiring for, and ask your manager directly about cross-training into one of them. Fulfilment and customer service are usually short-staffed in the same stores where checkout is being automated, which means the move is often available immediately and internally. Making that request while you are already on the payroll is far easier than making it as an external candidate two years from now.