Retail is Australia's second-largest private-sector employer. More than 1.1 million Australians work as sales assistants, checkout operators, retail managers, shelf fillers, and pharmacy assistants. They stock the shelves at Woolworths, work the floor at Kmart, and run the registers at Bunnings.
Now AI-equipped trolleys are scanning groceries as you shop. Self-checkouts cover 98 per cent of Woolworths supermarkets. Coles saved $327 million through automation last financial year. And behind the scenes, AI algorithms are telling warehouse workers exactly which aisle to walk down, which product to pick, and how fast to do it.
So where does that leave Australia's retail workforce?
What the AI scores say
We analysed every retail occupation using data from Jobs and Skills Australia and the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Each occupation gets an AI exposure score from 1 (minimal risk) to 10 (high risk). Here's where retail sits.
The roles with the highest exposure are retail managers at 5.5, checkout operators at 5.4, and pharmacy sales assistants at 5.3. Retail supervisors score 5.0 and sales assistants sit at 4.8.
At the lower end, shelf fillers score just 3.0 — their physical, on-the-ground work is harder to automate.
That might surprise you. Retail managers score higher than the people on the shop floor because much of a manager's day involves rostering, inventory ordering, sales reporting, and scheduling — tasks AI handles well. A Coles system already uses agentic AI to manage staff scheduling across stores.
The outlier is motor vehicle salespersons at 6.1. Car sales involve product configuration, financing calculations, and follow-up sequences that AI can increasingly handle through online platforms and chatbots.
The self-checkout question
Australia adopted self-checkouts faster than almost any other country. Woolworths has them in 98 per cent of its supermarkets. Coles is rolling out AI-equipped trolleys that let shoppers pick, weigh, and pay for groceries as they walk the aisles — no checkout at all.
A ServiceNow-commissioned report found that 24.9 per cent of Australian retail jobs are likely to be automated by 2027, with checkout operators facing a 36.9 per cent automation rate. That's roughly 323,000 full-time equivalent roles across the sector.
But the 121,200 Australians working as checkout operators aren't vanishing overnight. Self-checkouts still need attendants. Theft and scanning errors have forced several international retailers to scale back fully automated stores. And for many shoppers — particularly older Australians — a staffed register is still the preference.
The shift is real, but it's gradual. Checkout roles are shrinking (0.6 per cent growth over five years versus 2.5 per cent for sales assistants), and many are being converted to self-checkout supervision and loss prevention rather than eliminated entirely.
Behind the shelves
The bigger story might not be on the shop floor at all. It's in the warehouses.
In late 2025, more than 1,500 Woolworths warehouse workers blockaded distribution centres across Victoria and New South Wales. The trigger was a new "coaching and productivity framework" that used AI-generated algorithms and surveillance technology to direct each worker's movement and output. Workers wore headsets through which AI told them what to pick and how fast to move.
Woolworths' new automated distribution centre in western Sydney has double the product capacity of the old site — with roughly half the workforce. Robotic picking, AI-optimised transport routes, and machine-guided fulfilment are replacing manual processes at speed.
The United Workers Union pushed back hard, arguing that AI monitoring stripped workers of autonomy and that the new systems prioritised speed over safety. The dispute caused empty shelves across two states and became what The Conversation called "a test case for companies using AI and automation on workers."
Woolworths responded by committing $50 million to a reskilling fund for affected employees, including training in data analytics, machine learning, and robotics. It's an acknowledgment that automation is coming — and that the transition matters as much as the technology.
Which retail roles are safest?
Not every retail job faces the same pressure. Shelf fillers score 3.0 on AI exposure because stacking shelves, rotating stock, and dealing with the physical unpredictability of a shop floor remains difficult for machines. The 72,300 Australians in these roles are less exposed than their desk-based colleagues.
Visual merchandisers score 4.4 — their creative, spatial, and tactile work resists straightforward automation. The 7,700 people in these roles combine design sense with physical store layouts in ways AI image generators can't replicate.
Sales assistants at 4.8 sit in the middle. Their 559,800-strong workforce is Australia's largest retail cohort. The role is part transaction, part relationship — and it's the relationship side that keeps AI at bay. Product knowledge, reading customer body language, handling complaints, and building repeat business are hard to code.
The pattern across retail is the same as across the wider economy: the more physical, interpersonal, or spatially complex the work, the lower the AI risk.
The retail jobs AI is creating
Retail isn't just losing roles to AI — it's creating new ones. An estimated 80,000 new tech-adjacent positions will be needed in Australian retail to help adopt and manage AI systems. These include data analysts, e-commerce coordinators, inventory optimisation specialists, and loss prevention technologists.
AI literacy is now the most in-demand skill in Australia according to LinkedIn's 2026 Jobs on the Rise report. For retail workers, that doesn't mean learning to code. It means understanding how AI tools work, being comfortable with data dashboards, and knowing how to supervise automated systems rather than compete with them.
A Snowflake study found that while half of Australian and New Zealand organisations had cut jobs due to AI, 74 per cent said AI had also created new roles as existing jobs morphed and adapted. The question for retail workers isn't whether AI is coming — it's whether they'll be on the creating side or the displaced side of the transition.
What the numbers tell us
Retail's AI exposure sits in the moderate range — scores of 3.0 to 5.5 across most occupations, with the motor vehicle sales outlier at 6.1. That's lower than keyboard operators at 8.0 or call centre workers at 7.4, but higher than trades at 2.8.
The sector isn't facing a cliff. It's facing a slow, steady transformation. Self-checkouts reduce cashier numbers. AI scheduling tools reduce manager hours. Automated warehouses reduce picker headcount. But customers still walk into physical stores, still need help finding things, and still prefer talking to a person when something goes wrong.
Jobs and Skills Australia's Generative AI Capacity Study found that AI has "a greater capacity to augment work than automate work" — and retail is a textbook example. The technology handles the repetitive, data-heavy tasks. The human handles everything else.
If you work in retail, the data suggests your job is more likely to change than disappear. But change is still change, and preparing for it now beats being surprised by it later.
Check your own occupation's AI exposure score at How Safe Am I? or browse all 358 occupations on our rankings page.