What Indeed’s “hard-to-fill” jobs list reveals about the state of fashion retail

In fashion, we often obsess over the rarefied: the couturier with a hand like poetry, the stylist who can pull a look together with three pins and a prayer, the buyer with an instinct for what the world will want next season. But sometimes the true cracks in the system show up somewhere less glamorous: on the shop floor.

Indeed’s latest list of the UK’s hardest-to-fill jobs, on the surface, doesn’t sound particularly “fashion”: translator, transcriptionist, mail carrier. But scan further and there it is: retail store supervisor. Seventy-four percent of those roles remain unfilled after two months. In other words: the people who actually run the boutiques, manage the teams, and keep the cash registers humming are walking away.

And this is the paradox of fashion retail right now. We talk endlessly about experiential shopping, about turning Bond Street into a cultural promenade, about Louis Vuitton’s pop-ups or Chanel’s playgrounds. But the immersive theatre of retail still requires actors: supervisors, sales associates, stockroom managers. Without them, luxury’s cathedral-like stores are just expensive shells.

Stress and low pay

The shortage speaks volumes about the disconnect between the fantasy of fashion and the reality of working in it. Supervisory roles promise responsibility but often deliver stress, modest pay (Indeed cites 26,758 pounds on average), and little in the way of progression. For many, it’s easier to leave the floor than to climb the ladder.

And while we like to think of luxury retail as resilient, Bond Street vacancies under 5 percent, new flagships opening with confidence, the labour force behind that resilience is clearly fraying. If London is Europe’s luxury capital, as Walpole insists, it’s one built on the shoulders of shop-floor workers who are increasingly hard to replace.

There’s also a cultural angle here. Post-pandemic, retail staff became frontline workers of a different sort: mediating mask policies, calming frustrated tourists, navigating supply shortages. Many burned out. Others simply reconsidered the trade-off: evenings, weekends, emotional labour, all in return for salaries barely above those of a mail carrier. It doesn’t square with the glamour on display.

Fashion loves to borrow language from the stage, “collections,” “presentations,” “shows.” But every performance needs backstage hands. The true drama now is not just what designers put on runways, but whether retailers can find enough people to sell it. Because if store supervisors continue to vanish, the grand ritual of luxury shopping risks losing its script.

Perhaps the industry should take a cue from its own marketing. Urgency sells bags, sneakers, and seasonal drops; it might also need to sell careers. Until then, London may have its centi-millionaires and its Michelin stars, but on the shop floor, the very place where the brand meets the buyer, the lights are flickering.