SoylentNews

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

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