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Managers · code 1420

Retail and wholesale trade managers

AI can run the promotions and the stock. Running the store is still leadership.

Advertising the shop and keeping stock and sales records are where AI could take a fair chunk. Hiring, managing staff and safety are mostly out of its reach.

What they actually do (and what else they get called)

Retail and wholesale trade managers, plan, organize, coordinate and control the operations of establishments that sell goods on a retail or wholesale basis. They are responsible for the budgets, staffing and strategic and operational direction of shops, or of organizational units within shops that sell particular types of product. Tasks include - (a) determining product mix, stock levels and service standards; (b) formulating and implementing purchasing and marketing policies, and setting prices; (c) promoting and advertising the establishment’s goods and services; (d) maintaining records of stock levels and financial transactions; (e) undertaking budgeting for the establishment; (f) controlling selection, training and supervision of staff; (g) ensuring compliance with occupational health and safety regulations. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Grocery manager - Retail manager - Shop manager - Supermarket manager Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Sales manager - 1221 - Shopkeeper - 5221 - Shop supervisor - 5222 - Shop sales assistant - 5223 Notes Retail and wholesale trade managers are frequently employed in relatively small establishments that do not have a hierarchy of managers. The managers of large retail establishments such as supermarkets and department stores, however, should generally also be classified in this group, although such establishments may have a hierarchy of managers and supervisors. General managers of groups of establishments such as supermarket or department store chains are classified, however, in Unit Group 1120: Managing Directors and Chief Executives. Operators of small shops for whom the management and supervision of staff is not a significant component of the work are classified in Unit Group 5221: Shopkeepers. Staff who control and direct the activities of shop sales assistants, checkout operators and other workers, but who do not take responsibility for determining product mix, overall setting of prices, budgets and staffing levels, selection and recruitment, are classified in Unit Group 5222: Shop Supervisors.

  • trade regional manager
  • shop manager
  • supermarket manager
  • department store manager
  • sales account manager
  • retail department manager

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

56 / 100

Changing significantly

AI could do a real share of the everyday tasks. The job is changing shape, not vanishing.

Not the odds you keep your job. It's how much of the everyday work still needs a person, out of 100.

← Robot's turf Human's turf →

The ILO's official verdict: Exposed: Gradient 2

347 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 7 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 43.6 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 43.6 = 56.4.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Exposed: Gradient 2”: A good share of the tasks are affected.

This job rates 25.5 out of 100 for how hands-on it is. The score above only looks at AI tools, not robots, but for work this far from the physical that matters less.

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Retail and wholesale trade managers 56

v

Go on, try your partner's job. Or your sibling's. We won't tell.

Man v Bot

Where the bot helps, and where the human wins

Bot

What AI takes

The routine stuff. You may not miss it.

  • Promotions and advertising.
  • Stock and financial records.
  • Pricing decisions.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Leading store teams.
  • Customer service standards.
  • Health and safety.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Retail media and personalised offers.
  • Self-checkouts and smaller teams.
  • Stores as fulfilment hubs.

Written by a human, from the ILO's task ratings below. Yes, we see the irony. Read it as one person's take.

Meet your two rivals

They're not the same machine. AI software can only reach the parts of a job done on a screen or in words. A chatbot can't climb a ladder. A robot might, one day, if it doesn't fall off.

The AI

Lives in a screen. Never had to fix a boiler.

Threat level: Medium

50 could do without you

It could take over some of the work, and help with more. It could help with 73 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Lower

26 how hands-on

Not much of this job needs hands, so the robot can sit this one out.

So could a robot do the physical part?

Less than half of this job is hands-on. Robots still matter, but for a smaller part of the work, so we don't sort it any further.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 6 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

26 How
hands-on
6 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Less than half hands-on

The small print

They aren't a robot score, and nothing on this page is. Nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to put a number on it. These are the closest thing we have: how hands-on the job is, and how much fiddly, cramped work it takes, which is what Frey and Osborne found hardest for machines.

From O*NET, matched to one US job .

finger skill 7.1 · hand skill 7.1 · cramped spaces 4.7 · averaged · rule: hands-on under 50

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.8-observed-use measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

The job, task by task

Every job is really a bundle of tasks. Here's this one unpacked, with how much of each AI could do, out of 100. The score is the average, and averages can hide a lot.

AI's favourite task here scores 64, against an average of 44. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 64

    Promoting and advertising the establishment’s goods and services

    Medium
  2. 60

    Maintaining records of stock levels and financial transactions

    Medium
  3. 49

    Undertaking budgeting for the establishment

    Low
  4. 44

    Formulating and implementing purchasing and marketing policies, and setting prices

    Low
  5. 36

    Determining product mix, stock levels and service standards

    Low
  6. 28

    Controlling selection, training and supervision of staff

    Low
  7. 26

    Ensuring compliance with occupational health and safety regulations.

    Low

7 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Sidekick or replacement?

A tool that makes you faster is a very different thing from one that does the task while you watch. Jobs and Skills Australia measured the two separately, which is handy.

AI helps you
73
AI does it for you
50

Sidekick wins, by 23 points.

How good a match is this?

2 Australian jobs match this one, and we've simply averaged them. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 1333, 1421

Meanwhile, in real life…

Everything else here is about what AI could do. This is what people actually did. When they asked Claude for help with this kind of work, did they hand the whole task over, or roll their sleeves up and work through it together?

Out of every 100 conversations

56
44

worked through it together handed it over

The small print

Anthropic publishes this about its own product, and it doesn't feed into any score here. These are people who use Claude, not workers in general, so little use here doesn't mean AI can't reach the job. This job makes up 0.21% of the conversations.

These two add up to 100. The bars elsewhere on the page don't, because each is scored on its own, so we don't put them side by side.

observed use Anthropic Economic Index release 2026-06-26, period beginning 2026-05-01 data 0.8-observed-use 2026-05-01 · Anthropic, about its own product

So, should retail managers be worried?

Short answer: not worried, but paying attention. The job is changing.

Parts of it are changing. Promotion and stock records are rated Medium; budgets, purchasing, product mix, staffing and safety are Low. Retail systems and AI take on pricing and stock; people and service stay human.

Worth remembering: we score tasks, not jobs. When AI takes on a task, the job usually reshuffles around it rather than vanishing.

Where this job could lead

None of the new jobs we've written up start from here yet. Could be you're the first. See the jobs AI is creating →

How are the neighbours doing?

There are 30 jobs in the “Managers” family, averaging 64. This one is below the family average.

Pit this against any other job →