There still are, but sadly they're far and few between nowadays, mostly due to retirement, layoff, or permanent disability.

Once in awhile you'll fall upon a raw beginner or someone with a little experience who has the drive and energy to be really great at baking, decorating or both.  If you find one, you hang onto them for dear life -- for obvious reasons.  You might have to start at minimum wage or a little above, but if you prove yourself, any decent supermarket should, within its pay scale, raise your pay accordingly (I wanted to say "will" because that's been my experience, but I'm pretty sure that's not typical).

It's a very tough job, and it's been discussed here on CC before.  You definitely need a production mentality AND artistic flair to succeed or else nobody will buy, or will complain about, anything you create. I've seen it happen.

Supermarket bakeries are considered loss leaders.  They're located near the front of any store to entice entering customers.  If you have a great bakery, customers are not only more apt to buy product from you, but they are also more apt to buy more product in other departments too.

I'm so glad to hear someone else say that. Every time I mention it, I get the feeling no one believes me. I worked briefly as  grocery store cake decorator and was told that the cake decorating part operated at  loss. But I usually include something about how grocery stores actively endeavored to put bakeries and florists out of business and I guess I sound like a conspiracy theorist or something.  Even I am too young to remember the corner bakery, butcher and flower stand, but that's how it was. .

Somebody had to say it

Another thing:  One of the reasons why some chains shrink down their bakeries is because they are loss leaders, and they're using more profitable departments (like produce, for example) as the entice-to-come-in factor.  Or...if a bakery doesn't have the help or can't hold onto the help, a chain might decrease its area on the "you're not making much; therefore, you're not selling much, so why should you have all this floor space when it can be better utilized by another department?" theory.

We had two corner bakeries (one did mostly bread; the other, pastries), a honest-to-goodness corner grocery where you had to ask the man behind the counter to get what you wanted, a florist, and a fishmonger in my childhood neighborhood. The florist is the only one still there.

We still have a couple of honest-to-goodness dairies with honest-to-goodness cows in my general area!  Down by my in-laws there are still a couple of operating "gentleman" farms which sell eggs and veggies,

I agree that it should never have gotten out of the bakery like that. I have seen some great decorators come out of the store bakery arena. I have also seen some good looking cakes. I don't know what happened to this one.

I think that supermarket should not get a bad name, the manager should make sure that their decorators are trained correctly.