AFL-CIO report warns digital shelf labels could cost retail workers billions in wages

Universal adoption of electronic shelf labels across the retail sector could put as many as 191,633 jobs at risk and eliminate up to $6.9 billion in wages a year, according to a report published by the AFL-CIO Technology Institute this month, titled “Priced Out, Pushed Out: Electronic Shelf Labels Raise Prices and Shrink Paychecks.”

The report estimates the job losses at somewhere between 44,223 and 191,633 positions and annual wage losses between $1.6 billion and $6.9 billion, depending on how widely retailers deploy the digital tags in place of paper price tickets.

Electronic shelf labels are small digital screens attached to store shelving that display prices and can be updated remotely and instantly from a central system, replacing the paper tags that store employees have traditionally printed and swapped by hand. Walmart has said it plans to install the labels across all 4,600 of its US stores by the end of 2026, up from about 2,300 stores previously, according to CNBC. Kroger and Whole Foods have also begun rolling out the technology.

Lauren McFerran, executive director of the AFL-CIO Technology Institute, said the rollout risked harming both workers and shoppers and called for policymakers to restrict the technology, according to the Grocery Gazette.

The AFL-CIO report also raises concerns that the infrastructure behind digital labels would let retailers move to dynamic, demand-based pricing, adjusting prices throughout the day based on factors such as weather, time of day or store traffic, sometimes described as “surveillance pricing” when tied to data collected on individual shoppers. Walmart has rejected those claims, stating that it has “neither the intention nor the capability” to offer different shoppers different prices through the labels and that prices are typically updated outside store hours, according to invidis. A separate study conducted the previous year found no meaningful evidence linking electronic shelf label adoption to increased surge pricing.

State lawmakers have already begun responding. Twelve states have introduced bills to regulate digital shelf labels, according to the Grocery Gazette report. Maryland Governor Wes Moore signed the Protection From Predatory Pricing Act in April, making Maryland the first state to ban grocery “dynamic pricing” tied to a shopper’s personal data, with the ban taking effect October 1. The Maryland Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division will enforce it, with penalties of up to $10,000 per violation and $25,000 for repeat offenses.

New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill signed a similar measure, the Fair Price Protection Act, which bans surveillance pricing and separately imposes a one-year moratorium on new electronic shelf label installations starting February 1, 2027, the first such moratorium in the country, according to the United Food and Commercial Workers union. During the moratorium, the New Jersey Innovation Authority is required to study the labels’ effects on pricing before new installations can resume.

The technology’s spread comes as grocery unions have separately pushed back against pricing practices more broadly. A union-backed campaign covered by Civil Eats earlier this year sought a ban on surveillance pricing at grocery stores, arguing that combining shopper data with dynamic digital pricing could let retailers charge different customers different prices for the same product.

The AFL-CIO Technology Institute’s report calls on federal and state regulators to require advance public notice before retailers deploy electronic shelf labels and to prohibit tying the labels to individualized shopper data.