This Working Paper is basically a "source book", accounting the results of over five years of research into the retail industry and the sources used for that research. It originates from the Future of Work in Europe research project of the New York-based Russell Sage Foundation (RSF), in which the AIAS and STZ advies & onderzoek (consultancy & research) carried out the Dutch part, resulting in the monograph Low-Wage Work in the Netherlands (RSF, 2008). It also incorporates sources for the retail part of the project that subsequently compared low-wage developments in Europe and the US, resulting in the volume Low-Wage Work in the Wealthy World (RSF, 2010). The Working Paper shows the development of Dutch retailing as an industry in which in the 2000s nearly half of all workers earn less than the low-wage threshold, that is, less than two-thirds of the national median gross hourly wage. In the 1980s and early 1990s retailing already moved towards low pay in the Netherlands. From the mid-1990s on, major factors worked toward the persistence of low pay, in particular in the supermarkets, where three in five workers earned less than the threshold: the slowdown or even decline of disposable income growth and the low consumer-spending share; price wars and the spread of discounting; economies of scale and deregulation of zoning regulations and opening hours, and the development of supply-chain management systems. The longer opening hours allowed by the 1996 Opening Hours (Shops) Act initiated changes in the logistical chain. The food chains replaced adult shift workers with young shelf-stackers; the long "tail" of low youth rates, also applied for prospective checkout operators, proved to constitute an exit option for employers maintaining a low-wage orientation. The supermarket price war of 2003-2006 strengthened employers’ orientation on deploying youngsters, in particular secondary and tertiary education students, (initially, in 2003-04) at the expense of adult women and, structurally, at the expense of ...