Cashier

• Median Salary: $19,000 yearly or $9.12 hourly 
• Number of jobs: 3.3 Million
• Educational requirements: None
• Nature of work: Scanning/pricing goods for sale, and collecting tenders in exchange for goods.

It seems like everyday we encounter someone with this job, since they are everywhere we shop. It may seem hard to envision a world without cashiers, but it is definitely on the horizon. In many stores today we can see the first form of "self-checkouts" in many of our favorite grocery stores. These self-checkouts having been rising in prominence because the cost of the machine is quickly offset by the savings in wages/benefits/taxes over the long run. The machines never take break, never complain and are getting more efficient over time (as well as through customers learning to use it). Supermarkets have made the shift early, but soon we will see implementations of self kiosks in restaurants such as Panera Bread, which recently announced a shift to ordering kiosks. Taco Bell has made an innovative ordering app on your smartphone, in which you can order and pay right on the app, and pick up your food at the register. 

The future outlook of the cashier seems bleak, as future innovations are revealed. Imagine a supermarket, where you pay for all of your items quickly walking through an rfid scanner. Once that future takes hold, cashiers will shed jobs in large numbers, as the efficiency of the machine cannot be beat. Cashiers will certainly still exist however, as smaller/local stores, and specialized shops may not have a need for such an efficient system; but their numbers will drop dramatically.