Retail Jobs Don T Need To Be Bad

New York Times posted “Retail Jobs Don’t Need to be Bad. Here’s Proof”, an article written by Eduardo Porter. This article talks about jobs in retail, specifically in the United States. Retail is one of the largest employers in the United States. In fact, about one in eight workers in the private sector are in retail. The average full-time, first-line employee in retail makes less than $33,000 a year, which is below the economy’s midpoint. Retail jobs are now the work of the lower class, which raises an extremely important question: “If retail work sets the living standard for so many low-income families, why doesn’t it get more attention?”

To answer this question, the article looks at a study called “Where Bad Jobs Are Better”, recently published

Less than 5 percent of retail workers in the United States are represented by a union, while most retail positions in Denmark, France, the Netherlands, and Germany have multi-employer unions that determine wages and working conditions. These unions agree on schedules and almost always post them a week in advance, which is a major concern for retail workers across the United States who must be available at any time to only work a few hours a week, with no set schedule. With all this said, it is true that retail jobs everywhere, especially in the United States and various countries in Europe, are continuously getting worse. The article ends hopeful, though. These “dead-end” jobs can prosper into better jobs by changing social norms and certain regulations, and raising hourly minimum wage is the first place to

Motivation is a force that affects the direction of a person’s behavior and the level of that person’s effort and persistence. Most retail jobs are based off commission, which demonstrates that many employees in this field are extrinsically motivated. The more they sell, the more money they make. It is extremely important that managers are concerned about motivation because if the employees are properly motivated, the quality of their input and performance will increase, which benefits the business. The expectancy theory states that motivation will be high when performance results in the attainment of desired outcomes. Raising the minimum wage will drive retail workers who are extrinsically motivated, which will then increase their efforts and performance, making the company run more efficiently and