Zombie malls in good locations are being bulldozed and redeveloped as housing. Tens of thousands of stores have closed since 2017, when I started tracking this phenomenon under the category of “Brick-and-Mortar Meltdown.” In terms of Commercial Real Estate debt, retail is by far the worst, and has been for years, with huge default rates year-after-year.Ĭountless major retail chains have filed for bankruptcy and have been liquidated. But they’re hanging in there for as long as they can. They’re exposed to the brutal force of ecommerce. Some grocery sales have wandered off to ecommerce, but so far, Americans largely stick to going to the supermarket to buy food. The exception is Tesla, which was granted exemptions in many states back when it was a nothing and no one took EVs seriously. You cannot buy a new vehicle from the automakers, you have to buy from a dealer. But new-vehicle dealers are protected from ecommerce intruders by state franchise laws. Some used-vehicle sales have wandered off to ecommerce, and all major used-vehicle dealers engage in ecommerce. Gasoline consumption in millions of gallons per day is below where it had been in the year 2002: The decline in demand is now being accelerated by the large-scale sales of EVs. Many of them have become convenience stores. Gas stations are now seeing a persistent decline in demand for gasoline. New and used vehicle and parts dealers (largest retailer category).Walmart’s tech jobs in an office building are in one of the NAICS categories that tech jobs fall into.ĥ0% of retail sales are largely protected from ecommerce:Ībout 50% of retail sales (excluding food services such as restaurants) are in these three huge categories that have been mostly protected from ecommerce: The employees working at a Walmart fulfillment center are warehouse jobs, Walmart drivers are in the category of drivers. So the employees working at a Walmart store are retail jobs. Retail trade jobs are those at brick-and-mortar retail locations. But jobs in ecommerce operations are not jobs in the “retail trade.” Jobs in office buildings, warehouses, and delivery operations are not jobs in the retail trade. Walmart U.S.Įcommerce is booming, but its jobs are not in the “Retail Trade.”Įcommerce sales hit $1.1 trillion in the past four quarters. Walmart figured out some years ago that it wants to survive, and it went where the sales are: ecommerce and groceries. Walmart is the largest grocery chain in the US and the second largest ecommerce retailer behind Amazon. rose by 7%, on booming ecommerce, strong grocery sales, and dropping sales at the other aisles in its stores. ecommerce sales jumped by 27% in Q1 year-over-year grocery sales jumped by 12% but sales except groceries at its brick-and-mortar stores fell by 10%. Walmart explained part of the phenomenon in its last earnings report. What’s happening to jobs in the retail trade? Job openings at retail trade locations are now about where they’d been in 20: The retail trade also doesn’t include restaurants they’re part of Leisure & Hospitality.Īnd it’s not like the retail trade has a huge number of job openings it cannot fill (unlike some other sectors where labor shortages persist). It does not include jobs in office buildings of ecommerce operations, such as tech workers or customer service workers and it does not include drivers and warehouse employees, who are in their own respective categories based on location. Jobs in the retail trade include workers at brick-and-mortar retail stores and other retail locations. Jobs in the employment report are categorized by the NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code of the location of the business where those jobs are. The question that came up after my detailed report on jobs by employer category was this: Why were jobs in the “retail trade” in May, at 15.55 million, still down from the peak in 2016? And why were they about level with where they’d been at the end of 2007 before the Great Recession, even as total jobs at all “establishments” have grown by about 13% since 2007 and by 8% since 2016? Turns out, jobs in the “retail trade” are on a structural decline, despite surging retail sales, in part because of the way jobs in the “retail trade” are defined. gave us some color: ecommerce sales +27% grocery sales +12% non-grocery brick-and-mortar sales -10%.
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