Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Saturday April 15 2017, @04:58PM   Printer-friendly
from the One-Wal-Mart!=One-Mom&Pop dept.

The World Socialist Web Site reports

US retail store closures for 2017 are on pace to exceed [those of] 2008, when more than 6,000 locations were shuttered. In the first three months of this year, 2,880 store closures were announced, compared to 1,153 in the same time period in 2008. If the current pace of retail bloodletting continues, total store closures could top 11,000 by the end of the year, an unprecedented number.

Along with mounting store closures, retailers eliminated 30,000 jobs in March, with a similar number cut in February, making it the worst two-month period for workers in the retail sector since 2008, when the economy was in the depths of the recession caused by the bursting of the housing bubble and stock market crash.

According to Retail Metrics, the combined same-store sales for retailers in the first quarter of this year is expected to rise only 0.3 percent, the worst quarter in four years. Current expectations are well below the 0.8 percent growth in retail sales which economists had predicted in February. Without positive sales growth posted by discount giant Walmart, the retail industry would have posted negative figures. The dismal first quarter of 2017 follows poor in-store holiday sales at the end of 2016.

Traditional retailers are being slammed by competition from Internet retailers, in particular Amazon. Even as many companies are increasingly turning to online sales in an attempt to shore up their poor in store sales Amazon continues to dominate, accounting for 53 percent of all online sales growth in 2016.

[...] While market analysts point to the competition from Amazon as a key factor in retailer bankruptcies and store closures, another factor is the underlying weakness of the American economy and years of wage stagnation for the working class. Wage growth has been flat since the Great Recession and monthly year-on-year increases have not exceeded three percent since early 2009. According to the Economic Policy Institute, average hourly wages are $3.22 behind where they would be if wages grew at 3.5 percent over the last decade.

Even as the stock market has boomed over the last nine years, thanks to an infusion of unlimited cash through quantitative easing and other measures, the real economy has not recovered from the recession. The economic growth rate has not exceeded three percent in a decade and was a meager 1.2 percent in the first quarter of this year. Nearly all of the jobs created since 2008 have been either part time or temporary.

[...] The last decade has seen a series of buyouts, mergers, and acquisitions by private equity firms as part of last ditch efforts by retailers to avoid bankruptcy [as well as] outright liquidation by corporate raiders squeezing every penny before liquidating or reselling them.

Are you passing more and more boarded-up shops on your outings? Has the effect of fewer and fewer consumers (fewer people employed locally) trickled down to your company yet?


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @05:01PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @05:01PM (#494477)

    Oh no. There aren't any manufacturing jobs left since those all went to China.

    Oh no. There aren't any tech jobs left since those all went to India.

    Oh no. There aren't any retail jobs left since those all went to Amazon.

    Oh no! There aren't enough Starbucks jobs to employ everyone!

    Welcome to life in permanent unemployment. The good news is there's free wifi everywhere so you can keep busy by trolling incessantly. The bad news is you'll be trolling from the homeless shelter and eating all your meals in the soup kitchen because food and housing sure aren't free.

    America #1 Forever!

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +1  
       Touché=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Touché' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   1  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @08:08PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @08:08PM (#494545)
    • If everyone is unemployed, then nobody will be able to buy anything from Amazon, anyway; your scenario makes no sense.

    • When money is cheap (that is, interest rates are low), that sends retailers the signal that it's a good time to take out a loan in order to expand their businesses; hence, more retail outlets were built. Alas, it turns out that these interest rates were set artificially low; that signal to expand was fake.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 16 2017, @12:06AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 16 2017, @12:06AM (#494603)

      "There aren't enough for everyone" is not the same as "everyone is unemployed."

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 16 2017, @03:19PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 16 2017, @03:19PM (#494834)

        Economics. How does it work?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @11:39PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @11:39PM (#494590)

    I'm waiting for the "Oh no! There aren't any more CEO jobs in USA and I don't want to move to China!"