Skip to content
man bot

Service and sales workers · code 5222

Shop supervisors

Shop supervisors supervise and coordinate the activities of shop sales assistants, checkout operators and other workers in retail and wholesale shops such as supermarkets and department stores. Tasks include - (a) planning and preparing work schedules and assigning staff to specific duties; (b) instructing staff on sales procedures, including how to handle difficult or complex cases; (c) ensuring that customers receive prompt service; (d) participating in and providing advice to managers on interviewing, hiring, training, evaluating, promoting and dismissing staff, and resolving staff grievances; (e) examining returned goods and deciding on appropriate action; (f) taking inventory of goods for sale and ordering new stock; (g) ensuring that goods and services are correctly priced and displayed; (h) ensuring that safety procedures are enforced. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Checkout supervisor - Supermarket supervisor Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Shop manager - 1420 - Street stall salesperson - 5211 - Shopkeeper - 5221 Note Operators of small shops for whom the management and supervision of staff are not a significant component of the work are classified in Unit Group 5221: Shopkeepers. Shop managers who, in addition to supervision of staff, perform management tasks such as determining product mix, overall setting of prices, budgeting and making decisions on staff levels, selection and recruitment are classified in Unit Group 1420: Retail and Wholesale Trade Managers.

A few tasks are affected, but the heart of the job isn't. It ranks 284 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • shop supervisor

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

64
Holds up
against AI Minimal Exposure

AI could take on 36 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 36 = 64

That's the whole sum, and you can check it against the ILO's study.

35.1
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, matched to one US job

27.7
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 34 · hand skill 28.6 · cramped spaces 20.5 · averaged

Kind of hands-on work · hands-on under 50 Less than half hands-on

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.

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 0.7-work-setting measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

What this number leaves out This job rates 35.1 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.

The tasks behind the score

The score is the average of these. A job is really a bundle of tasks, and an average can hide how uneven that bundle is.

The task AI could do most of scores 52.5, while the average is 36. A big gap means some of this job is wide open to AI and some of it barely at all. That's quite different from a job where everything sits somewhere in the middle, even when the averages match.

  1. 52.5

    Planning and preparing work schedules and assigning staff to specific duties

    Medium
  2. 51.5

    Ensuring that customers receive prompt service

    Medium
  3. 41.3

    Ensuring that goods and services are correctly priced and displayed

    Low
  4. 36.5

    Instructing staff on sales procedures, including how to handle difficult or complex cases

    Low
  5. 33

    Taking inventory of goods for sale and ordering new stock

    Low
  6. 30.8

    Participating in and providing advice to managers on interviewing, hiring, training, evaluating, promoting and dismissing staff, and resolving staff grievances

    Low
  7. 27

    Examining returned goods and deciding on appropriate action

    Low
  8. 15.8

    Ensuring that safety procedures are enforced.

    Very Low

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

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.7-work-setting

Helped, or replaced?

The score above can't tell a tool that makes you faster from one that does the task instead of you. Jobs and Skills Australia looked at those two things separately, and this is their result, matched to this job.

One Australian job matches this one closely, so this is about as reliable as it gets here.

AI helps you
68
AI does it for you
42

Helping wins by 26 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 6215

Compared with similar jobs

There are 39 jobs in the “Service and sales workers” group, averaging 74.7. This one is below that.