Catherwood LibraryILR School

Online retailer Boxed joined the automation ranks last spring when the company decided to open a new robotic warehouse in Union, New Jersey, and, instead of laying off workers as feared, added a third shift in order in order to handle an increasing volume of orders. While automation technologies such as robot arms that pick goods from shelves may replace some workers over the next decade, the increasing number of warehouses needed to deal with that increased volume is expected to generate increased hiring. E-commerce sales are growing roughly five times as fast as storefront retail sales, according to market research firm Forrester, and the surge in e-commerce has left brick-and-mortar stores struggling, with Toys “R″ Us, RadioShack, and Payless Shoesource all filing for bankruptcy this year. The loss of 140,000 brick-and-mortar retail jobs over the last decade has been offset by the growth of 400,000 e-commerce and warehousing jobs, however. Research shows that people spend less time shopping than in the past – 25 hours less per year compared with a decade earlier – as families increasingly outsource shopping to e-commerce employees - such as Walmart’s “personal shoppers” who pick and package orders. Boxed workers at the newly automated warehouse find their jobs less physically taxing than in the past. Their jobs now involve “problem solving” to ensure shelves remain balanced and that the weight of a package matches the requested order – cases requiring human judgment that robots can’t solve. In order to preserve the humanity from traditional shopping experiences, Boxed employees also write thank you notes for each processed order; a customer who orders diapers may receive a congratulatory note, for example.