Posted on 03/27/2014 6:36:58 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The rank-and-file retail workforce has never been through an employment drought like the kind seen in the past two years, outside of a recession or its immediate aftermath.
While retail-industry woes are a regular news staple, the sector's addition of 308,000 nonmanagerial jobs from December 2011 to December 2013 — before severe winter weather began skewing economic data — has provided the appearance of a recovery in payrolls. Yet that increase was offset by a slide in the average workweek to 30 hours from 30.7 hours.
In fact, total hours clocked by nonsupervisors didn't budge in that two-year span, Bureau of Labor Statistics data show. (They later took a weather-related dive to start 2014.)
"When you go into stores these days, it's increasingly difficult to find service," said Ken Perkins, president of Retail Metrics.
Companies have been adopting self-checkout machines and scanners to check prices, while shifting more of their investment to their online operations, he pointed out. This recent, unusual period of stagnation is important to consider because no sector employs more low-wage workers, so none may be more central to the debate over how to narrow inequality.
The retail industry encompasses 13.1 million nonsupervisory workers who earn, on average, just over $14 an hour. And the number making less than $10 an hour tops 5 million.
The key question is how retail-sector employment of low-wage workers, currently at a standstill, will hold up if employers are mandated to take on more responsibility for health care coverage and pay a substantially higher minimum wage.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
PUSH BACK ON THE USE OF THE TERM “WORKERS”
The implications of that word empower the left.
People are “employees”. They are individual independent contractors, not someone stuck in a specific job working for a specific employer and totally helpless to change his plight, as “workers” implies.
I have a friend, older single woman living alone, works retail and used to get her 40 hour work week. She has been cut back to 34 hours. She is having a very difficult time making it.
If retail is your measurement of economic health, you’re already screwed not matter what the numbers are.
Let’s employ everyone for 1 hour per week. We’ll have negative unemployment before you know it.
I feel the same way about the word worker and I do everything I can to avoid using it as the media leftists do. I say employee and employer.
ping...
Just following the example of product packaging in the marketplace. Less is more, more or less.
Somehow, the cheerleaders for the "Service Economy" didn't mention that.
“I have a friend, older single woman living alone, works retail and used to get her 40 hour work week. She has been cut back to 34 hours. She is having a very difficult time making it.”
Well Obama said now she will have more liesure time to enjoy herself. :-)
Yes, clearly she was "job-locked" before now. Now with Obamacare, she can quit that job and pursue a life of merriment and artistic ventures.
Seriously, that is sad.
She has worked hard for this company 10 years and only makes 10 dollars an hour. She is a cashier. By the time she pays for her health insurance and the taxes come out. She isn’t left with much.
She tried to file for food stamps and was refused.
She is rich ya know.
Seems I may have to offer her a room in my house. I would never leave her on the street.
The lady I know had a cheatin’ hubby who left her. She was too old to find much else at her age and with her education. She raised 3 kids and worked hard.
She doesn’t complain much, but there is not much else she can do at 62 years old.
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