What it was like to work at a grocery store during peak COVID
What it was like to work at a grocery store during peak COVID
“Marketplace Morning Report” is continuing to cover diverse views of the economy from a range of perspectives as part of our Economic Pulse series.
Ann Larson is a writer who focuses on economic justice, and a fellow with the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. She spent a year working as a cashier at a big-name grocery store at the height of the pandemic.
Larson is now writing a book about her experience, and she spoke with “Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio for more. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
David Brancaccio: Just something on you to start: You found yourself at the sharp end of the economy — I guess we could call it — five years ago, as the pandemic hits hard. You worked a job that you could not do remotely, an essential worker at a grocery store, right? And that was not a reporting project to see how the other half-lived or something. This was for real, Ann?
Ann Larson: This was for real. Yeah, about five years ago, I found myself unemployed, out of work, and it happened to occur just at the moment that the pandemic hit, so very bad timing. And so in my city where I live, Salt Lake City, Utah, supermarkets were some of the only businesses hiring.
Brancaccio: So many people across society were struggling at so many levels, but you and your coworkers, I mean, probably [experienced] a special level of precariousness.
Larson: When I worked at the supermarket, the average wage was about $13.50 an hour. Some people made more and some people made a little less, and that tracked with the national average for supermarket workers. The rate has ticked up a little bit since then, but right now, cashiers are making an average of about $29,000 a year for a full-time job. So the supermarket’s part of this low-wage economy where about 30 million workers are working in jobs that pay about that or less. I’ll just share with you one study that came out a couple of years ago that showed that Kroger employees — Kroger is the second-largest grocery company in the country — the study showed that about three-quarters of Kroger employees do not make enough to pay the bills, and about 40% said they were food insecure. So we have an industry that employs millions of people to sell the rest of us food, and they can’t feed themselves. So this is a national crisis that I want to draw attention to.
Brancaccio: And probably not just Kroger. Now, when we take the Economic Pulse here, professional economists tell us the numbers look solid these days. They see resilience, meaning the overall macroeconomy. Yet many voters last fall, and you here in January 2025, see that many feel that their financial situation is at the edge, is precarious. I guess we live in a world of technological advancement. Technology can help, but it can also make us more insecure.
Larson: Right now, companies like Kroger and Walmart are in the process of implementing electronic price tags. So what that means is that when you walk down the aisles, what you’re seeing is a digital tag that can be raised. The price can go up from a distance. So, an executive sitting in an office 3,000 miles away can raise the price of the can of soup or the box of cereal in your store. During a crisis, during a pandemic, the price of toilet paper might go up. And that’s what the stores are implementing right now. Some members of Congress, a coalition led in the House by Rashida Tlaib, have written letters to Kroger asking for information about this and raising concerns. And so far, the companies have ignored members of Congress. They simply operate with impunity. And no one really knows what this dynamic pricing will look like, where it will be implemented, when prices will rise, and there needs to be some regulation. The public needs to know that this is happening.
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