Why Retailers Are Suddenly Desperate to Keep Their Least-Valuable Workers

If the ability to throw a 100-mile-per-hour fastball sits at one end of the human capital spectrum, stocking shelves and swiping barcodes is at the opposite. But the U.S. economy gets on quite nicely with just a few dozen ace pitchers, while it takes vast stadiums of cashiers — and no small amount of investment in human capital — to keep things humming. A modest bidding war has broken out among the retailers that hire from the bottom of the labor pool, buoyed in part by improving sales.