Newspaper horoscopes are loads of crap and are there purely for entertainment purposes. Anyone who finds them of any value probably believes in the profundity of fortune cookies, too.
My chart's been done three times, once in 1974, once in 1980 and again 2001. Each time the astrologer did it without a fee or any expectation of any kind of remuneration. The second one knew me well, the other two were friends-of-acquaintances who knew very little about me. In all three cases, they were identical (near as I can remember), so it may not be a science, but it is a discipline of one kind or another.
The extent to which the charts accurately reflected my personality was occasionally spot-on, other times less so, but the hits outnumbered the misses to a degree which impressed me, as a fence-sitter and skeptic; the one who knew me well did no better nor any worse than the others, FWIW.
Professional salespeople, like professional athletes, tend to be pretty superstitious what with "lucky ties" or the carrying of various talismans to help them get in and maintain "the zone", and I was in high-end professional furniture sales for most of my time between the ages of 20 and 45. When I was about 24 I had an associate who used to warn that sales and deals made while Mercury was in retrograde (no, I have no idea what that means astronomically) were unstable and subject to customer remorse and/or changes of mind. It was a statistical reality that most of our cancellations and adjustments made to existing orders occurred while Mercury was in retrograde (yes, I did the calculating myself). It could be due to any number of reasons, but it was statistically accurate.
Bear in mind that Astrology dates back millennia and was a precursor to the modern science of Astronomy, just like Alchemy led to Chemistry. Comparisons to religion are incorrect: it's a discipline that is favored by any number of folk, from complete Pagans and New-Agers to Christians and Jews (and beyond). Though I cannot back this up with any links, since it originated in Mesopotamia and ancient Persia, I would bet that it's both proscribed by Sharia law as blasphemy and widely practiced in that part of the world, still: even if clandestinely.