WASHINGTON — When the robots came to online retailer Boxed, dread came too: The familiar fear that the machines would take over, leaving a trail of unemployed humans in their wake.
“I had a lot of people asking me, ‘What is going to happen to us?’” said Veronica Mena, a trainer for the e-commerce startup. Anxiety had rippled through her co-workers after company executives announced plans to open an automated warehouse in nearby Union, New Jersey.
Amazon.com’s purchase of Whole Foods, which operates a store in Portland, similarly shocked the grocer’s workers and customers when the deal was announced in July. The move is designed to give Amazon a physical testbed for its technology and innovations, such as smaller and more local warehouse locations and drone deliveries.
The mingling of the online and bricks-and-mortar worlds still is shaking out, but a new AP study found that e-commerce and automation could actually increase jobs, including those in warehouses.
In the case of Boxed, employees’ fears didn’t come to pass.When the new warehouse opened this spring, workers found that their jobs were less physically demanding than at the previous, manual warehouse in Edison, New Jersey. And rather than cutting jobs, the company added a third shift to keep up with rapidly growing demand.
What happened at Boxed — and has occurred elsewhere — suggests that widespread fears about automation and job loss are often misplaced. Automation has actually helped create jobs in e-commerce, rather than eliminate them. By accelerating delivery times, robotics and software have made online shopping an increasingly viable alternative to bricks-and-mortar stores, and sales have ballooned at online retailers.
The surge in e-commerce has required the rapid build-out of a vast network of warehouses and delivery systems that include both robots and human workers. Even if the robots replace some people in each warehouse, the proliferation of new warehouses should still generate hiring for years to come.
“We’re not looking to do the same work with half the people,” said Rick Zumpano, vice president for distribution at Boxed. “Since we’re growing, we need everyone.”
Jobs have been lost at storefront retailers, which have suffered under the e-commerce onslaught. But worries about a “retail apocalypse” wiping out many of the nation’s 16 million retail jobs have missed a more important trend: E-commerce actually leads to more jobs by paying people to do things we used to do ourselves.
When people shop online, tasks that consumers once did — driving to a store, searching through aisles for a product, bringing it to a cashier and paying for it — are now done by warehouse employees and truck drivers. People spend less time shopping than in the past, research shows.
That means the bankruptcies and store closings in the retail sector aren’t the complete picture. Michael Mandel, an economist at the Progressive Policy Institute, calculates that the number of e-commerce and warehousing jobs has leapt by 400,000 in the past decade, easily offsetting the loss of 140,000 brick-and-mortar retail jobs.
Amazon accounts for much of the additional employment. Yet it’s also at the vanguard of automation. Since 2014, Amazon has deployed 100,000 robots in 25 warehouses worldwide. At the same time, it’s nearly tripled its hourly workforce, from roughly 45,000 to nearly 125,000.
Online grocery shopping is also creating more jobs. Walmart is expanding its online grocery pickup service to 2,000 stores, double the 1,000 where it is now available. The company has created a new class of workers —”personal shoppers” — to fill all the orders.
All these trends have been helped by automation’s ability to hold down costs.
And even with automation, there are still jobs at all these warehouses for people to do.
In Maine, e-commerce is in an early growth phase, AP data show. That includes electronic shopping locations that handle mail-order or internet retailing and general warehouses responsible for storage and handling of goods, not including specialized products.
In 2006, 37 warehouse locations across the state employed 2,173 workers who earned an average of $31,537 annually. Employees almost doubled to 4,148 in 2016 at 53 locations, and pay rose more than $10,000. Bangor, Portland and South Portland all saw an increase in warehouse locations.
Electronic shopping locations in Maine, such as Walmart, are fewer in number compared to warehouses but also growing. They more than doubled from 37 in 2006 to 89 in 2016.
Like Walmart, Hannaford also offers online grocery ordering for pickup at several of its locations in central and southern Maine.
The AP did not identify shopping or warehouse locations in its study, citing confidentiality with survey companies. The analysis of online retailers includes jobs at e-commerce call centers, such as Wayfair’s planned 950 positions in Bangor and Brunswick, that handle customer orders.
Even with automation, employees can add a personal touch.
Barbara Ward, 56, is a packer at Boxed, and like all her colleagues, she writes a thank-you note for each order she packages. When a customer has ordered diapers, a packer might write a congratulatory note.
Automation is more likely in the coming years to make up for labor shortages rather than replace workers, said Marc Wulfraat, president of MWVPL, a consulting firm. Any warehouse workers displaced by automation will easily find jobs elsewhere.
“I don’t see hundreds of thousands of workers unemployed and on the street,” he said.
The Bangor Daily News contributed to this report