According to retail employees, working conditions started to deteriorate when they returned to the job after mandatory Covid lockdowns.
Photographer: Getty Images (3); AP Photo
US Retail Workers Are Fed Up and Quitting at Record Rates
The job is more complicated than ever — and increasingly not worth the low pay.
To be a US retail worker in 2023 means fielding an onslaught of growing American anxieties about everything from high prices to politics. Increasingly, some workers say the job isn’t worth the wages.
Low pay, erratic schedules and monotonous tasks have long been a challenge for the nearly 8 million Americans working in retail, but the pandemic years have added a host of taxing new duties. Employees must cope with an uptick in shoplifting and customer orneriness. They manage online orders and run up and down the aisles to unlock items as quotidian as toothpaste.