The British Retail Consortium (BRC) believes there is a chance up to 1 million retail jobs in the United Kingdom may disappear by 2025 as new technologies and rising wage costs come into play.
Increased pressure on retail
Currently, 3 million people are employed in the UK retail industry, but a lot of them might be out of a job in the near future. According to the BRC, the remaining jobs would be of a higher level than those of today.
There are a few reasons why jobs may be lost. Firstly, there are many new technologies that can take over from actual employees, but those are not the main reason why jobs will be cut.
According to the BRC, 74,000 out of 270,000 stores will shut down in the next few years as a result of the British government’s policies that end up costing a lot of retailers additional money. The minimum wage increase for employees above 25 from 7.2 pounds to 9 pounds in 2020 could be the cause of a huge increase in job cuts.
“The combination of price deflation, business rate rises, and growing labour costs is putting increasing pressure on a highly competitive sector which is already going through a time of great change”, Tesco CEO Dave Lewis said. Plenty of other companies have also pointed out that higher wage costs will lead to job cuts or higher prices.
