Posted on 03/11/2014 12:24:53 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
If the U.S. economy is getting better, then why are major retail chains closing thousands of stores? If we truly are in an "economic recovery", then why do sales figures continue to go down for large retailers all over the country? Without a doubt, the rise of Internet retailing giants such as Amazon.com have had a huge impact. Today, there are millions of Americans that actually prefer to shop online. Personally, when I published my novel I made it solely available on Amazon. But Internet shopping alone does not account for the great retail apocalypse that we are witnessing. In fact, some retail experts estimate that the Internet has accounted for only about 20 percent of the decline that we are seeing. Most of the rest of it can be accounted for by the slow, steady death of the middle class U.S. consumer. Median household income has declined for five years in a row, but all of our bills just keep going up. That means that the amount of disposable income that average Americans have continues to shrink, and that is really bad news for retailers.
And sadly, this is just the beginning. Retail experts are projecting that the pace of store closings will actually accelerate over the course of the next decade.
So as you read this list below, please take note that things will soon get even worse.
The following are 20 facts about the great U.S. retail apocalypse that will blow your mind...
#1 As you read this article, approximately a billion square feet of retail space is sitting vacant in the United States.
#2 Last week, Radio Shack announced that it was going to close more than a thousand stores.
#3 Last week, Staples announced that it was going to close 225 stores.
#4 Same-store sales at Office Depot have declined for 13 quarters in a row.
#5 J.C. Penney has been dying for years, and it recently announced plans to close 33 more stores.
#6 J.C. Penney lost 586 million dollars during the second quarter of 2013 alone.
#7 Sears has closed about 300 stores since 2010, and CNN is reporting that Sears is "expected to shutter another 500 Sears and Kmart locations soon".
#8 Overall, sales numbers have declined at Sears for 27 quarters in a row.
#9 Target has announced that it is going to eliminate 475 jobs and not fill 700 positions that are currently empty.
#10 It is being projected that Aéropostale will close about 175 stores over the next couple of years.
#11 Macy's has announced that it is going to be closing five stores and eliminating 2,500 jobs.
#12 The Children’s Place has announced that it will be closing down 125 of its "weakest" stores by 2016.
#13 Best Buy recently shut down about 50 stores up in Canada.
#14 Video rental giant Blockbuster has completely shut down all of their stores.
#15 It is being projected that sales at U.S. supermarkets will decline by 1.7 percent this year even as the overall population continues to grow.
#16 McDonald's has reported that sales at established U.S. locations were down 3.3 percent in January.
#17 A home appliance chain known as "American TV" in the Midwest is going to be shutting down all 11 stores.
#18 Even Wal-Mart is struggling right now. Just check out what one very prominent Wal-Mart executive recently admitted...
David Cheesewright, CEO of Walmart International was speaking at the same presentation, and he pointed out that Walmart would try to protect its market share in the US – where the company had just issued an earnings warning. But most of the growth would have to come from its units outside the US. I mean, via these share buybacks?
Alas, outside the US too, economies were limping along at best, and consumers were struggling and the operating environment was tough. "We're seeing economies under stress pretty much everywhere we operate," Cheesewright admitted.
#19 In a recent CNBC article entitled "Time to close Wal-Mart stores? Analysts think so", it was recommended that Wal-Mart should close approximately 100 "underperforming" supercenters in rural locations across America.
#20 Retail consultant Howard Davidowitz is projecting that up to half of all shopping malls in America may shut down within the next 15 to 20 years...
Within 15 to 20 years, retail consultant Howard Davidowitz expects as many as half of America's shopping malls to fail. He predicts that only upscale shopping centers with anchors like Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus will survive.
So is there any hope that things will turn around?
Well, if the U.S. economy started producing large numbers of good paying middle class jobs there would definitely be cause for optimism.
Unfortunately, that is just not happening.
On Friday, we were told that the U.S. economy added 175,000 jobs during the month of February.
That sounds pretty good until you realize that it takes almost that many jobs each month just to keep up with population growth.
And according to CNS News, the number of unemployed Americans actually grew faster than the number of employed Americans in February...
The number of unemployed individuals 16 years and over increased by 223,000 in February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
In February, there were 10,459,000 unemployed individuals age 16 and over, which was up 223,000 from January, when there were 10,236,000 unemployed individuals.
Meanwhile, the labor force participation rate continues to sit at a 35 year low, and a staggering 70 percent of all Americans not in the labor force are below the age of 55.
That is outrageous.
And things look particularly depressing when you look at the labor force participation rate for men by themselves.
In 1950, the labor force participation rate for men was sitting at about 87 percent. Today, it has dropped beneath 70 percent to a brand new all-time record low.
The truth is that there simply are not enough jobs for everyone anymore.
The chart posted below shows how the percentage of working age Americans that actually have a job has changed since the turn of the millennium. As you can see, the employment-population ratio declined precipitously during the last recession, and it has stayed below 59 percent since late 2009...
If we were going to have a "recovery", we should have had one by now.
Since there are not enough jobs, what is happening is that more highly educated workers are taking the jobs that were once occupied by less educated workers and bumping them out of the labor force entirely. The following is an excerpt from a recent Bloomberg article...
Recent college graduates are ending up in more low-wage and part-time positions as it's become harder to find education-level appropriate jobs, according to a January study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The share of Americans ages 22 to 27 with at least a bachelor's degree in jobs that don't require that level of education was 44 percent in 2012, up from 34 percent in 2001, the study found.
Due to the fact that there are not enough middle class jobs to go around, the middle class has been steadily shrinking.
In 2008, 53 percent of all Americans considered themselves to be "middle class". Today, only 44 percent of all Americans consider themselves to be "middle class".
That is a pretty significant shift in just six years, don't you think?
For much more on this, please see my previous article entitled "28 Signs That The Middle Class Is Heading Toward Extinction".
Despite what the politicians and the mainstream media are telling you, the truth is that something is fundamentally wrong with our economy.
On a gut level, most people realize this.
According to one recent survey, only 35 percent of all Americans say that they are better off financially than they were a year ago. And according to a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, only 28 percent of all Americans believe that this country is moving in the right direction.
The frightening thing is that this is about as good as things are going to get. The next great wave of the economic collapse is approaching, and when it strikes the plight of the middle class is going to get a whole lot worse.
Yes, thanks for the clarification.
Retail chains are run by IDIOTS and THIEVES.
Nice rant. Have a good one!
A while back, I watched a Sean Hannity segment with a panel of guests, both left and right. Hannity asked a Lib, "is there a limit to how much a person should be taxed?" The first reply was a deer-in-the-headlights gaze and then a mumbled incoherent response. ALL of the rest of the Dem/Libs in the panel could not or would not answer the question, except for a some unrelated and distracting blathering. My first thought was...we are so screwed.
Follow it daily..........Job cuts and Store Closings........
http://www.dailyjobcuts.com/
This is the correction.
So if I rented a semi trailer went to Seattle, smoked some legal weed of course, went around bought everything at yards sales and went to KY I could make a good profit and get high to boot?
And it kinda works both ways. Antique furniture that sells for $3k in Seattle typically goes for something in the $800 to $1,000 range over here. But crystal is almost worthless over here for some reason.
You're right on this cuban. Yes, McDonald's is having problems... but it's because their store are increasingly staffed by people who are borderline crooks.
My late father many times told me that the only men who consistently had money during the depression were successful salesmen. Even “useless” degree holders can learn to sell. I recommend Tom Hopkins, but there are several good programs.
Where are you seeing these people? Tenured teachers are things of the past now that many states are right-to-work states. Hell, I don't even KNOW of a tenured teacher anywhere come to think of it.
Importantly, an economic reality is that economic change is buffered by time.
That is, if you have a stock market plunge in a week, it is a “panic”; but if it takes an entire year, it is a “correction”. This is because when there is time, people can try to mitigate the damage, and others will try to exploit the damage.
But other conditions apply as well. Often economic changes do not happen at the international and national level, but at the regional, or even state and local level. For decades, the US would have regional changes, where a prosperous region would “take the pressure off” an adjacent region having a downturn.
However, what we are seeing today is long term international and national erosion, in which economic policies, even philosophies, have run their course and are starting to fall apart.
If politicians try and cling to collapsing ideas, like Keynesianism, despite the reality, there will be a bad fall, sooner or later. But those with better ideas, such as conservatives, can hopefully take over and start to replace failure with the success of the new economic idea.
Hmmmm ... per-capita spending “Up”, “em”-ployment rate flat at a 30-year low, must be lots of deficit spending going on.
Not a good sign.
True enough. There will always be a demand for good salespeople. If you are good at selling a product, you will also be good at selling yourself. Isn’t that what successful people really do. They sell their talents, their special insights. They have the “it” factor that other people are willing to pay for. These sorts of people will always land on their feet. A college degree in a marketable major is not a requirement to be successful, but it certainly helps.
From the article (emphasis mine):
But Internet shopping alone does not account for the great retail apocalypse that we are witnessing. In fact, some retail experts estimate that the Internet has accounted for only about 20 percent of the decline that we are seeing. Most of the rest of it can be accounted for by the slow, steady death of the middle class U.S. consumer.
A lot of the companies mentioned in the article have been going out of style for years like sears staples office depot—and especially radio shack. Heck I’m glad to hear radio shack is going down. I hated nearly every darn thing I’ve bought from them. sears used to be great but not anymore. as more office material changes to bits and bytes, staples and office depot will naturally slim down.
The “dollar” stores are hurting Wal-Mart. They carry quite a few basic items, and their overhead is very low. Usually just two employees on duty at any one time. The owner of the store is the manager, and may own 2-5 locations.
Here is debt payments as a percent of disposable income:
Nice, pretty charts you’ve got there.
Now reconcile them with the fact that “Em”-ployment has been stuck for five years where it was during the dying days of the Carter administration.
"Em"ployment is near an all time high. Since you mentioned the Carter administration here is the total non-farm payrolls from 1976-Present:
Enjoy!
bttt
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