It may sound contradictory, but new research shows that online shopping creates additional jobs in the retail sector. What's more, those jobs often pay well too.
A total of 400,000 new jobs were created in the US between 2007 and 2017 as a result of online shopping, Progressive Policy Institute researchers found. The number of jobs that disappeared was 'only' 140,000.
This has mostly advantages, according to the researchers. The time we would normally spend in a shop shrinks significantly because everything is available within a few clicks. That time is mostly put into work, which is mainly created in logistics and delivery. An added benefit: those jobs pay on average about 31 per cent better than a job in a brick-and-mortar shop.
Amazon
One of the companies that has made a big contribution to the increase in jobs is Amazon. In 2005, the shop promised delivery within 2 days, which was only possible with 100 distribution centres, each employing some 2,000 to 3,000 people. Supermarket Walmart is also making a big splash: to keep up with the online race, the supermarket recently opened an online shopping centre in Florida for which 1,500 new employees were hired.
The researchers expect this trend to continue and the number of online jobs to increase. The researchers cannot predict whether the growth of jobs in distribution centres will slow down because of the arrival of robots.
In the Netherlands, at least, it only seems to increase in the coming years. Bol.com this year opened a new distribution centre where 2,000 people can work, online supermarket Picnic announced earlier this year that it will create some 10,000 new jobs in the long term.
