RFID 'will hit four million jobs'

First it was offshoring, now it's RFID. According to the analysts, the tiny tracking chips are the next threat to jobs.

Four million of them, says The Yankee Group, in the US alone, where those workers whose jobs mainly entail reading barcodes will find themselves redundant as the new, less labour-intensive technology takes over.

However, the advent of RFID doesn't necessarily mean an extra four million in the dole queue because some jobs will evolve from dull stock-checking into more demanding roles, according to the Users and Vendors are Beginning to Explore the Utility of RFID Technology in the Supply Chain report.

"The introduction of radio-frequency ID will affect four million US employees. Some will lose jobs, but most will see their jobs migrate from mundane identification and routing tasks to more value-added positions", such as customer service, it says.

Fortunately for retail workers, the somewhat gentle pace of rollouts will keep job cuts to a minimum, according to Adam Zawel, director of wireless/mobile enterprise and commerce at the Yankee Group.

"There will probably be an increase in employee responsibilities as RFID and bar code scanning will overlap in the short term... The change in retail environments will be gradual," he said.

While RFID might be bad news for warehouse staff, it will certainly be good news for the vendors. According to the report, the next three years will see users spending $2bn on the tags themselves and up to $3bn on infrastructure.