Low paying retail jobs

Blog 2: Wages, Skills and the Limits of the Current Model.

The decline of the high street is not only about empty shops. It is also about the kind of work the current model creates.

Many front-line retail roles are relatively low paid. The National Living Wage for workers aged 21 and over is £12.21 an hour from April 2025, while median hourly pay for full-time employees across the UK was £18.64 an hour in April 2024. That means many retail jobs sit far closer to the wage floor than to the national median.

The ONS classifies sales assistants and retail cashiers mainly around tasks such as selling goods, taking payments, replenishing stock and maintaining displays. It also notes that some employers require no formal qualifications, while others ask for GCSEs or vocational retail qualifications.

At the same time, retail is changing. The British Retail Consortium says 79% of retail jobs now require digital skills, yet 62% of retail leaders say they cannot find people with the right experience. Research on essential digital skills has also found retail to be one of the weakest-performing sectors.

So the issue is not simply that retail work has no value. It is that the current model too often concentrates value in the stock and supply chain, while leaving workers with relatively low pay and limited opportunities to create more value themselves. That is exactly where micro manufacturing offers a different path.