Amazon’s grocery store disruption has a very human problem

When Amazon unveiled plans on Tuesday for grocery stores without cashiers, it seemed like an omen of the future: A store full of shoppers, with just a few workers in the background.

Are the robots coming for our jobs? (Some of them.) Is Amazon Go the future? (Probably.)

And yes: It could create some jobs, too. But as for the jobs it'll leave behind, that's where bad news gets worse. It's not just that Amazon's grocery-buying disruption will cost jobs—it's that the people who rely on those jobs are already our country's most economically vulnerable. It's a bad situation made worse.

In Amazon's Seattle pilot store, customers take items from shelves, put them in their bag, and leave Once a customer is out the door, Amazon charges their account for what they took, sends a receipt, and that's it. No cashier, no bagging—nothing. It's a system powered by Amazon's advanced tracking technologies that they've branded, astutely, "Just Walk Out."

And that—the tracking technology, and the machinery behind the store's operations, to say nothing of the stores themselves—could create jobs. Tech support, to help shoppers with their Amazon Go app. Customer-facing employees in the store, to put shoppers at ease with their automated future. Traditional shelf-stockers, sandwich-makers, and so on.

But it also eliminates the lowest-skilled jobs in the grocery store: Cashiers and baggers. And it's not an issue that is unique to Amazon Go, either.

"The overall impact of computer automation so far has been positive," said James Bessen, a professor at the Boston University School of Law who studies the economics of innovation. "But it's been very unequal. Low-wage, low-skill jobs are lost and high-wage, high-skill jobs are gained. It becomes more difficult for people to acquire the skills they need to get jobs and contributes to growing inequality."

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Whether it's Uber's self-driving cars or McDonald's computerized kiosks, new technologies are now inevitably accompanied by talk of what they mean for the future of labor. Amazon's plans are bigger than self-checkout, and bigger than just Amazon. Other grocery and retail chains are likely working on similar technology, even if they're years (or decades) behind.

But, the argument goes, Amazon's going to make groceries cheaper, which makes everyone's dollar worth more (including the most impoverished among us).

Not likely. The same workers losing out to new technology could even be excluded from shopping at a setup like Amazon Go, too. The store requires the use of credit or debit, like shopping Amazon online would, which excludes the 9 million American households who are unbanked, as well as shoppers who rely on cash and coupons for their grocery shopping. Customers also need a smartphone and the Amazon Go app, leaving out the one-third of Americans who don't have a smartphone.

Not everyone is convinced, however, that this kind of technology will be broadly bad. Paul Oyer, a professor of economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, said the advent of Amazon Go and its ilk could be an economic force for good. Booming business for Amazon means more "fancy vacations, psychotherapy and other things successful people spend their money on," he explained.

Fear about machines suddenly taking human jobs goes back decades, Oyer noted. That doesn't mean it's how that shift actually happens.

"The idea that any of these technologies that create robots are going to leave mass unemployment—it's possible, of course. But historically, if you look over history of all humankind, there's a slow, steady stream of technology that replaces human labor," Oyer said. "Everybody thought the automobile was going to kill jobs when it ended up creating massive amounts of jobs."

But those gains won't necessarily be distributed equally. Even if Amazon has to hire more workers, they'll need to be either slightly more skilled (in-store jobs) or significantly more skilled (white collar jobs) created by booming business.

That could help bolster the middle class, but still means that low-end jobs will disappear.

"This Amazon Go thing," Bessen said, "would lead to growing inequality."