The good jobs in e-commerce

The Wall Street Journal

E-commerce is getting a bad rap, said Michael Mandel. Skeptics say the digital economy is “leaving the bulk of Americans behind” and driving up income inequality. The truth is something else entirely. “Already, e-commerce has been creating more and better jobs than it destroys” and has the potential to be a source of decent employment for the working class, “just like the industrial jobs of the early 20th century.” Retail workers in 2016 earned virtually the same weekly salary as their predecessors did in 1987, when measured in inflation-adjusted dollars. By contrast, workers at e-commerce fulfillment centers, who do the “picking and packing for customers,” make an average of 31 percent more than retail workers

in the same area. These fulfillment jobs demand “a mix of physical and cognitive skills,” and they pay “decent wages” while requiring only a high school diploma. “Jobs like these can close the income gap.” E-commerce has also created more jobs than it has displaced, adding over the past two years 178,000 positions compared with the 123,000 that have disappeared in brick-and-mortar stores. While naysayers say these fulfillment roles might be temporary—there only “until robots can take over”—e-commerce employment “is likely to keep soaring.” Like the manufacturing era before it, the “internet of goods” era has the potential to create solid jobs and become “the next major step in the internet’s evolution.”