How many people are needed to run an equivalent amount of non self checkouts? Just because they need some employees doesn’t mean they aren’t reducing the amount of jobs overall.
It is not a one to one comparison, sco is significantly slower than the cashier (not sure about US but here Aldi/Lidl cashiers are madness). So i will just put a random number here but the ratio might be something lik 1:3 where 1 cashier would swap 3 SCOs. I still believe it is reducing staff and that is the whole point.