This has been Australia’s No.1 job for decades. My, how it’s changed

This industry started its modern transformation more than 50 years ago – but I occasionally miss the quixotic inefficiencies of yesteryear.

Shop assistant has been our nation’s No. 1 job for decades. Picture: istock

It’s something many of us do weekly. Some, I am told, do it daily. I’m talking about shopping, of course. The most common single occupation in Australia is shop assistant, with 571,000 workers (in February) according to ABS surveys.

Shop assistant has been our nation’s No. 1 job for decades, in fact, even though the shopping experience itself has undergone profound changes. I’ve come to the conclusion that the retail industry started its modern transformation more than 50 years ago. The mining boom of the late ’60s, the rise of women in the workforce (which injected greater spending power into households) and the coming of age of the Baby Boomer generation all contributed to it.

Prior to this era groceries were bought from a grocer, fast food comprised the local fish & chip place, family-run milk bars blossomed ubiquitously, and petrol was pumped by what the Census at the time endearingly called a “forecourt attendant”. And proudly sitting atop the retail hierarchy was the department store, typically owned and operated by a local family.

Melbourne had Myer, Buckley & Nunn – and Georges of Collins Street, which served as a Knightsbridge-esque style icon for the city’s aspirational. Sydney had, among others, David Jones. Brisbane had McDonnell & East. In Perth it was Boans and in Adelaide there was John Martin’s. Hobart had Fitzgerald’s. Warrnambool had Younger’s. Terang (pop. 2,400) had a department store of sorts in “the Co”, aka the co-op, including a section known affectionately as the “fancy department”.

The ground floor of the David Jones Elizabeth Street store Sydney’s CBD in the early 1960s.

But the old-style department store – like the grocer’s, independent hardware store, milk bar, record shop, video store and newsagent – were all destined to be superseded. Pharmacies, too, have been reimagined. Products are now crammed into a series of tight aisles with head-high shelves organised behind a single bank of checkouts. (Did you know that the number of checkout operators in Australia peaked five years ago, according to ABS surveys?)

But if ever there was an exemplar of the rise of modern retail, it’s the latest iteration of petrol stations. In a single building, staffed by a single person, in addition to petrol retailing you’ll find a newspaper stand, confectionery, an ATM, drinks, fast food, milk, clean(ish) bathrooms and, pièce de résistance, café tables from which it is possible to quietly contemplate the meaning of life amid the comforting hum of traffic. This is bliss for me. Here is a small town’s entire high street condensed into a perfectly designed facility staffed by a single shop assistant. How’s that for productivity!

If ever there was an exemplar of the rise of modern retail, it’s the latest iteration of petrol stations. Picture: istock

Online shopping, too, has transformed the retail sector. Since the pandemic, many of us – even Baby Boomers – have downloaded apps and visited websites that enable more or less anything to be delivered to the family home, thus bypassing the high street altogether.

The era of change that stemmed from the late ’60s has ultimately led to the globalisation of the way we shop, either online via businesses that are mostly based in the US or China, or by demanding the kinds of productivity gains that produce shops staffed by a single person.

And while I have no doubt this is all very efficient, I occasionally miss the quixotic inefficiencies of old-style shopping.

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