In remote Anchorage, finding quality workers can be a challenge. Industry is booming in the region, with new investments in oil, gas and the nation’s first graphite mine, which means jobs are plentiful, but laborers more scarce for other critical jobs, especially those in warehouses.
“In Alaska, hiring qualified labor is not easy,” explained Rosita Johnson, business development officer for ASCI, a supply chain management company based in Anchorage. “It can be a huge challenge.”
While some view automation technology as a threat to the U.S. workforce, particularly in 2026— when hiring is stagnant and few workers are leaving their jobs—it’s open supply chain jobs like those in warehousing that are actually driving automation investments. More companies are considering robotics and AI solutions to pair with their current workforce, reduce future need for more workers and address safety concerns, despite high costs associated with the tech.
“The marketing messaging is usually, ‘You can do these things faster, you can do these things more accurately and you can do this with fewer people,’ and why it resonates with folks who operate warehouses is because they’ve been struggling with labor,” said Shreyas Shukla, research director at research and advisory firm Info-Tech Research Group. “Turnover is high, filling all of the open vacancies is extremely difficult.”
In the face of labor challenges, the benefits of warehouse automation for individual businesses and the larger economy are clear: faster movement in and out of facilities means more cargo on the road or on the job site, less downtime in storage facilities and happier customers. But identifying tech tools that have a clear return on investment and offer improvements without overly complicating operations remains a challenge for many businesses.
“There are some degrees of automation that are so costly, it’s very hard to earn them back,” said René de Koster, professor emeritus of logistics and operations management at Erasmus University Rotterdam. “These are huge investments which require a very long horizon.”
A successful warehouse receives, moves, scans, stores and ships goods, tasks that have historically been completed by a human but increasingly can be assisted by robotics or digital software. Accomplishing the work accurately and efficiently is critical; lost, damaged or delayed goods can mean reduced profitability, increased operational expenses and upset customers.
“Because this has been such a manual process, a manual environment, you lose the credible knowledge once people retire or leave,” Shukla said. Retaining talent, therefore, is paramount for business success, even in a time when many businesses are seeking to cut costs through reducing headcounts. February 2026 BLS data found workers in the transportation, warehousing and utilities sector had a 2.1 percent quit rate, above the total quit rate nationally and on par with private jobs for the month.
Warehousing jobs have grown dramatically over the past decade, correlating with the rise of online retail and direct to consumer shipping. Warehouse fulfillment jobs pay decently; the average hourly earnings for nonsupervisory employees in the warehouse and storage sector is $25.37, according to January data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics with order fillers and material movers more likely to earn closer to $21 per hour.
With the large volume of goods, ASCI prioritizes worker safety in hiring and staffing, Johnson said.
Nationally, warehousing jobs have an injury rate of 4.8 per 100 workers, which is nearly double the average of all jobs (2.6) and higher than mining (2.0), construction (2.2) and manufacturing injury rates (2.7), per 2024 BLS data.
“You have to take safety very seriously in the warehousing world because things can fall from the shelf, you climb up the ladders, you drive forklifts,” Johnson said. “Finding people who take safety seriously can be a challenge.”
While investments in AI or automation could promote safety and increase efficiencies, there are no warehouses that operate fully autonomously, a human is still required for some tasks. For businesses, this means tech investments must be weighed against employee satisfaction, de Koster said. “The work that remains isn’t always the most interesting for people and it may lead to more strain on the people.”
Komar Distribution Services, a third-party logistics provider with warehouses in California, Oklahoma and Georgia, uses two kinds of robotic tools in its facilities: Exotech’s Skypod, an automated storage and retrial system and tSort by Tompkins Robotics. Robotics tools are among the most expensive physical automation opportunities on the market, more commonly held by e-commerce or delivery companies like Amazon, while smaller scale genAI applications have grown on the market to improve IT functionality.
For some companies, being AI-first in automation is a branding strategy, Shukla said, but one with a short lifecycle if disconnected from overall financial goals. “If you’re cooking up these new AI-specific metrics, just to make it look like you have more AI than everyone else, that’s not going to be a sustainable approach.”
KDS has no interest in fully automating warehouses because it could limit future business opportunities, said Eric Ritchey, KDS’ vice president of sales. Robotics tools can only accommodate certain sizes or shapes of goods and “if you build things around a certain model and if you don’t fit into that model, it becomes more difficult,” Ritchey said.
Instead, KDS has found automation to be most impactful when it “empowers the human,” and helps the company maintain headcounts.
Research shows robotics can make a significant impact on reducing dangerous elements of warehousing work, including moving, sorting or packing parcels.
Amazon, as the largest online retailer and distributor in the U.S., has higher injury rates for its workers, tied in part to the large volume of packages moving through facilities but significantly to employer practices that fail to protect workers, according to one state-level analysis in New York. Even at Amazon, automation has been tied to safer working conditions.
A 2025 study found Amazon’s automated fulfillment centers had 40 percent less severe injuries among workers but 77 percent growth in nonsevere injuries, like strains and sprains. In automated facilities, workers were also less likely to be engaged or satisfied with their work, which can have material downstream effects, said Brad Greenwood, one of the report’s authors and a professor of information systems and operation management at George Mason University.
“You’re having greater throughput, but it’s causing injuries and resulting in turnover,” Greenwood said.
Software offerings have grown over the past few years with the rise of generative AI and physical automation capabilities have gotten more complex as well, but that doesn’t mean the warehousing industry is rushing to buy new tools.
“If you think AI and automation will eliminate human tasks, I don’t see that happening,” de Koster said. “But it will reduce human labor and replace it.”
