Cashiers Require Judgment and Do Not Qualify as Simple with Little or No Judgment

Cashiers represent over 3 million jobs according to the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) and the Employment Projections (EP) (the foundation of the Occupational Outlook Handbook OOH)). The OOH confirms that cashiers generally require short-term on-the-job training. The O*NET data describes on-the-job training as 30 days or less in over 70% of mobs with 44% requiring little or not related work experience and 81% requiring a high school diploma or less. The ORS assigns  SVP 1 or 2 classification to 90%  to 97% of the cashier jobs. The DOT and SOC crosswalk tell us that 18 DOT codes make up 41-2011 Cashiers, six light and unskilled, seven light and semi-skilled or skilled, and five sedentary and semi-skilled or skilled.  When a vocaitonal witness testifies to hundreds of thousands or even millions of jobs, that testimony is verifiable. 

But that does not mean that cashiers engage in simple work with little or no judgment. We know that cashier II carries reasoning level 3. A split in the circuits exists. The language of the regulation drives the conclusion that unskilled does not depend on SVP alone. The distinctions between unskilled, semi-skilled, and skilled make the point clear. We explored the case study of counter and rental clerks as illustrative. 

Today, we put another tool on the belt. What does the Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics through the Occupational Requirements Survey say about the job duties for cashiers? The 2025 factsheet includes cashiers. BLS says:

Cashiers 

Receive and disburse money in establishments other than financial institutions. May use electronic scanners, cash registers, or related equipment. May process credit or debit card transactions and validate checks. 

For terms and definitions in this profile, see definitions of major terms. 

Cognitive and mental requirements 

The qualifications that workers need to use judgement, make decisions, interact with others, and adapt to changes in jobs. In 2025, more than basic people skills were required for 8.7 percent of cashiers. Basic people skills were required for 91.3 percent.

Read those cognitive and mental requirements again. "Workers need to use judgement (sic), make decisions, interact with others, and adapt to changes in jobs." Ignore the King's English spelling of judgment, it is irrelevant. Focus on the required fuctions (1) use judgment; (2) make decisions, (3) interact with others, and (4) adapt to changes in jobs. 

The use of judgment defies the basic definition of unskilled, little or no judgment. 20 C.F.R. § 404.1568(a): 

Unskilled work is work which needs little or no judgment to do simple duties that can be learned on the job in a short period of time. The job may or may not require considerable strength. For example, we consider jobs unskilled if the primary work duties are handling, feeding and offbearing (that is, placing or removing materials from machines which are automatic or operated by others), or machine tending, and a person can usually learn to do the job in 30 days, and little specific vocational preparation and judgment are needed. A person does not gain work skills by doing unskilled jobs.

Using judgment, making decisons, interacting with you, and adapting to changes run afoul of the plain meaning of the regulation. 

The factsheet points out other facts about cashiers not apparent from an initmate understanding of the DOT. Sedentary cashiers do not represent nearly 30% of the jobs, they make up less than 2% of the jobs. Cashiers engage in medium exertion in almost 37% of jobs, confirming the commonsense observation made a grocery stores every day. Very few cashiers have the ability to sit or stand, just 3.2%. The only counter-intuitive point from the factsheet -- cashiers do not work around crowds. They work with one customer at a time. Obvious on serious reflection. 

Do cashiers typically have SVP 1 or 2? Yes. 

Do cashiers need to exercise judgment and deal with people? Of course they do, those are critical functions of cashiers. 

Use the factsheets. 

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Suggested Citation:

Lawrence Rohlfing, Cashiers Require Judgment and Do Not Qualify as Simple with Little or No Judgment, California Social Security Attorney (May 19, 2026)  https://californiasocialsecurityattorney.blogspot.com

The author has been AV-rated since 2000 and listed in Super Lawyers since 2008.