Costco CEO Says He Will Not Let AI Make Decisions for…

According to Fortune, Costco CEO Ron Vachris told the Economic Club of Chicago that "I don't see AI making choices on items for Costco. I don't know that we'll ever take that out of the hands of a skilled buyer." Fast Company framed the comments as a marquee retailer drawing a clear line on automation. Vachris also said Costco has not displaced workers, because the business is growing faster than AI removes tasks. At Metaintro we track how that kind of stance shapes real hiring, so you know which employers still bet on people and where the steady retail jobs actually are.

What did Costco's CEO actually say about AI?

Speaking at the Economic Club of Chicago in a conversation moderated by United Airlines president Brett Hart, Vachris made three points that matter for anyone working in or eyeing a retail career. First, on buying decisions, he was direct, telling the room "I don't see AI making choices on items for Costco. I don't know that we'll ever take that out of the hands of a skilled buyer," per Fortune. For a retailer famous for a tightly curated selection, that is a meaningful signal that the human judgment behind what lands on the shelf is not on the chopping block.

Second, he addressed performance reviews and management. "AI won't be doing evaluations with our employees, but there is a great place for developing AI systems, and it's going to make us a better company," Vachris said, again via Fortune. In a year when plenty of headlines warn about algorithmic management, that is a deliberate boundary around the human side of the workplace.

Third, and most reassuring for frontline staff, Vachris said the company has not used AI to shrink its workforce. "We've not displaced people because the business is growing at a faster rate. Those employees who were doing those tasks before have now elevated up to more of a forward-thinking role," he told the audience, as reported by Fortune. The message is that automation is being used to lift people into higher-value work rather than to remove them.

How is Costco actually using AI right now?

Costco is not anti-technology, and the distinction matters for job seekers trying to read the room. On the company's most recent quarterly earnings call, Vachris described a deliberate, narrow approach. "AI is also being interwoven into our business where we believe it can strengthen our model. We're approaching it in a very Costco way, practical, member-focused and grounded in tangible business value," he said, per Constellation Research.

The concrete use cases are mostly behind the scenes. According to Constellation Research, an early use of AI integrated into Costco's pharmacy inventory system now compares prescription drug pricing across vendors and predictively reorders stock, pushing in-stock rates above 98 percent. The company is also deploying AI tools in its gas business to improve inventory management. On the front end, Vachris said that "the warehouses that are first to adopt this pre-scan technology have shown checkout speed improvements of up to 20 percent," and that U.S. warehouses hit record checkout productivity late in the quarter, again per Constellation Research.

Notice the pattern. AI is being aimed at inventory accuracy, pricing, and checkout speed, not at replacing the buyers, clerks, or pharmacy staff who run the floor. That is the difference between automation that augments a job and automation that erases it, a line we have watched play out very differently elsewhere, including in our reporting on how AI is erasing back-office jobs in Phoenix.

Is Costco actually growing fast enough to keep hiring?

This is the load-bearing part of Vachris's argument, because his "growing faster than AI removes tasks" claim only holds if the numbers back it up, and they do. In Costco's third quarter of fiscal 2026, net sales rose 11.6 percent to $69.15 billion, company-wide comparable sales rose 9.8 percent, and net income reached $2.19 billion, up 15.2 percent year over year, according to the company's quarterly results announcement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Comparable sales excluding the impact of gasoline prices and foreign exchange rose 6.6 percent for the company as a whole, which still points to broad-based demand and more work to staff rather than less.

Membership, the engine of Costco's profit, is holding firm too. The company reported a 89.7 percent worldwide renewal rate, a 92.2 percent rate across the United States and Canada, and 148.5 million total cardholders, up 4.0 percent, in the same quarter. A retailer signing up members and opening warehouses at that pace is hiring into growth, not managing decline, which is the structural backdrop that makes a no-layoffs pledge credible rather than aspirational.

The footprint is expanding in step with sales. Costco operated 914 warehouses at the close of fiscal 2025 and expects to finish fiscal 2026 with roughly 940, the same filing shows. Reporting on the expansion plan notes the chain intends to open about 35 locations in fiscal 2026 for a net addition of 30 stores, and to keep opening more than 30 sites a year as part of a roughly $6.5 billion build-out, per TheStreet and additional coverage of the plan. Every new warehouse needs buyers, stockers, pharmacy staff, and managers, which is the practical reason a growing chain can fold automation into its operations without cutting headcount.

Why is Costco taking a people-first stance on automation?

The stance is not a public relations flourish, because it lines up with how Costco has run its labor model for years. The company pays well above sector norms. Per CBS News, a three-year agreement covering roughly 272,000 workers across the U.S. and Canada lifted top-of-scale clerks to $31.90 an hour and top-of-scale assistants to $30.20 an hour, with bottom-of-scale clerks at $21 and assistants at $20, and two additional one-dollar increases scheduled for March 2026 and March 2027.

When a retailer pays at the top of the market, every worker is an expensive, trained asset, and the incentive shifts toward keeping that person productive rather than swapping them for software. That is the economic logic underneath Vachris saying employees have "elevated up to more of a forward-thinking role" rather than been let go. It is also a useful contrast with employers chasing the widest possible pay gaps, a dynamic we covered in our look at the widest CEO-to-worker pay ratio in the S&P 500.

For job seekers, the read is simple. Companies that have invested heavily in wages and retention have a built-in reason to treat AI as a tool for their people, not a replacement for them. Those are the employers worth prioritizing when you weigh stability, and they sit at the opposite end of the spectrum from the store closures and grocery layoffs that have rattled parts of the sector.

Are other retailers keeping humans in the decision loop?

Not all of them, and that is exactly why Vachris's comments stand out. Across retail and logistics, automation is moving fast in some corners. We have reported on humanoid robots arriving in warehouse jobs and on apparel giants making aggressive technology bets, including the Zara owner's AI diversification strategy. Some chains are shrinking their physical footprint outright, as with the restaurant closures hitting service workers.

The honest picture is mixed. AI is genuinely reshaping retail and adjacent work, and ignoring that helps no one. What Costco shows is that the outcome depends heavily on how leadership chooses to deploy the technology and how the business is growing. A chain expanding store count and sales can absorb efficiency gains by moving people into new roles, while a chain that is contracting has fewer places to put displaced staff. The reassuring counterpoint Costco offers is real, but it is conditional on growth and on a deliberate decision to keep humans in the loop. If you want the broader trendline, our analysis of whether the 2026 labor market is quietly collapsing lays out the warning signs worth tracking.

Where are the most stable retail careers in 2026?

Stability in retail is increasingly about which role you hold, not just which store you work in. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that employment of cashiers will decline about 10 percent from 2024 to 2034, the single largest projected job loss of any occupation at roughly 314,000 positions, with the spread of self-checkout and online sales cited as the main cause, per the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook. That is the clearest signal that purely transactional, repetitive roles carry the most risk.

The picture for retail sales workers more broadly is steadier but flat. The BLS projects overall employment of retail sales workers to show little or no change from 2024 to 2034, yet about 586,000 openings are expected each year on average, almost all of them from workers who retire or move into other fields rather than from new positions being created, per the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook. The same source puts the median wage for retail salespersons at $16.62 an hour as of May 2024, which underscores how far Costco's $21-and-up floor sits above the typical storefront job and why turnover-driven churn dominates the rest of the sector. For workers, the lesson is to chase the roles a growing warehouse club keeps adding rather than the ones self-checkout is quietly thinning out.

The more durable retail careers cluster in roles that require judgment, specialized knowledge, or trust. Skilled buyers are the obvious example, given Vachris's insistence that AI will not make those calls. Pharmacy roles are another bright spot, because the BLS projects employment of pharmacy technicians to grow about 6 percent from 2024 to 2034, faster than the average for all occupations, driven by an aging population and rising chronic disease, per the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook. Roles in logistics, supervision, merchandising strategy, and member or customer experience also tend to absorb automation rather than be erased by it.

If you are open to leaving the sales floor entirely, the skilled trades remain a strong hedge, and we have mapped skilled trades that pay six figures without a degree. The throughline is that work involving human judgment, physical dexterity, or specialized expertise is far harder to automate than scanning items at a register.

What does this mean for your retail career?

If you work in retail or want to, treat Costco's stance as a practical filter rather than a guarantee. Start by targeting employers whose growth and pay give them a reason to retain staff, because a chain raising wages and opening locations is structurally more likely to redeploy you than to cut you. Read the same signals Costco displays in its own numbers, namely rising sales, rising store count, and rising membership renewal, before you weigh an offer. The opposite is also true, and the grocery and store closures we have covered are a reminder to weigh a company's trajectory before you commit.

Next, move toward roles that pair with technology instead of competing against it. Learn the inventory, pricing, and analytics tools your employer is rolling out, because the workers Vachris described as elevated into "forward-thinking" roles are the ones who picked up new skills as automation arrived. Volunteer for the pre-scan, mobile-ordering, or stock-prediction rollouts when they reach your store, since being the person who understands the new system is far safer than being the person it replaces. The same lesson applies well beyond retail, and our piece on why AI will create more engineering jobs, not fewer shows how augmentation can expand opportunity rather than shrink it.

Finally, keep your options open across the sector. Retail is not one monolithic risk profile, and even chains under pressure can rebound, as we explored in Target's 2026 rebound and what it means for retail job seekers. The goal is to position yourself where human judgment still drives the business, and to keep learning so that when AI shows up in your workflow, it makes you more valuable rather than redundant.