What an incredible shrinkage of jobs! |
There are those who believe the
U.S. economy is getting better, but unfortunately, this is far from the truth.
Major retail chains are closing their doors all over the United States of
America. If the economy is improving, this would not be the case.
Because millions of people prefer
to shop online for convenience, the rise in internet retail, such as Amazon,
have greatly affected this outcome. However, this alone does not account for
the loss the economy is suffering as a whole. There are many reasons why we are
seeing a great retail ‘apocalypse’.
Believe it or not, retail
professionals state that the internet alone only accounts for approximately 20
percent of this decline. The vast majority of this decline is a
result of the slow, steady death of the middle class U.S. consumer.
For five years in a row, median
household income has dropped, yet the cost of living and bills just keep piling
up. The amount of disposable income the average American has
available is continuously shrinking at an unprecedented rate, which is not good
news for the retail industry. Unfortunately, this may only the
beginning.
Retail experts now project that the
pace of store closings is going to accelerate over the course of the next
decade.
Below is a mind-blowing list of facts
regarding the U.S. retail apocalypse, and keep in mind as you look it over, it
isn’t just going to get worse, but it is going to get worse very soon:
01. Right now,
approximately one billion square feet of retail space is sitting vacant in the
United States.
02. Just last month,
Radio Shack announced they were going to close over one thousand of their
stores.
03. Just last month,
Staples announced it was going to close 225 of its stores.
04. For 13 quarters in a
row now, same-store sales at Office Depot have declined.
05. J.C. Penny, who has
been slowly dying for years, recently announced their plans to close 33 more of
its stores.
06. Add to that, J.C.
Penny lost 586 million dollars during the second quarter in 2013 alone.
07. Since 2010, Sears has
closed down approximately 300 stores, and CNN has been reporting that Sears is
expected to shutter another 500 Sears and Kmart locations soon.
08. For 27 quarters in a
row now, overall sales numbers have declined at Sears.
09. Target has recently
announced that it plans on eliminating 475 jobs and will refrain from filling
700 empty positions.
10. It has been
projected that AĆ©ropostale will close approximately 175 stores over the next
few years.
11. Macy’s announced
that it will be shutting down five stores, as well as eliminating 2,500 jobs.
12. By 2016, the
Children’s Place will be closing down 125 of its ‘weakest’ stores.
13. In Canada, Best Buy
recently closed approximately 50 of its stores.
14. Blockbuster, a video
rental giant, completely shut down every one of its stores.
15. It is projected that
U.S. supermarket sales will drop by 1.7 percent this year as the overall
population increases.
16. Fast food chain
giant, McDonald’s reported that sales at established U.S. locations dropped
down 3.3 percent in January.
17. American TV, a home
appliance chain in the Midwest, plans on shutting down all eleven stores.
18. Walmart is
apparently strugging at the present. A prominent Walmart executive
recently made a shocking statement:
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. A recent CNBC
article titled, “Time To Close Walmart Stores? Analysts Think So”, recommended
Walmart close approximately 100 ‘underperforming’ supercenters in rural
lcations throughout the U.S.
20. Retail consultant,
Howard Davidowitz projects that up to at least half of all shopping
malls in the U.S. might 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.
Unless the U.S. economy begins
producing large numbers of steady, good middle class jobs, things are not going
to improve, unfortunately. And, this just isn’t happening.
During the month of February, we
were told that the U.S. economy added 175,000 jobs, which sounds great until
you understand that it takes nearly that many jobs alone, each month, just to
keep up with the population growth. According to CNS News, the
percentage of unemployed Americans grew faster than the number of employed
Americans in February of 2014. And, according to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics (BLS), the number of unemployed individuals age 16 and up increased
by 223,000 in February.
Also, in February, there were
10,459,000 people, age 16 and over, who were unemployed, which was up 223,000
from the previous month when there had been 10,236,000 unemployed.
In the meantime, the labor force
participation rate remains at a 35 year low, and a staggering 70 percent of all
Americans who do not belong to the labor force are below the age of 55 years
old.
What’s more, things appear even
more depressing when you check out the labor force participation rate for males
alone. In 1950, the labor force participation rate for men was
approximately 87 percent. Sadly, today it has plummeted below 70
percent, which is a brand new all-time record low.
Unfortunately, jobs have become
scarce. There are not enough available jobs per person in the United
States of America. Check out the below chart to see the actual
percentage of working age American citizens that have a job, and see for
yourself how drastically it has changed since the turn of the millennium.
There is no doubt the employment-population ratio has greatly declined during the last recession, and it has continued below 59 percent since the latter half of 2009. This confirms that an economic recovery is not in the cards. If we were going to have a recovery, we would have surely had one by now.
Due to the fact that just are not
enough jobs, more highly educated workers are taking the jobs that were once
held by less educated employees, and then knocking them out of the labor force
altogether. And, as a side note, many of our jobs are being taken by
foreigners who will work for less wages.
The following is an excerpt from a
recent article in Bloomberg News:
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”.
This is a phenomenal shift in only
six years!
Regardless of what we are being
told by politicians and mainstream media, something is obviously fundamentally
wrong with the current state of our economy. The majority of people do actually
realize this.
According to recent surveys, only
35 percent of all U.S. citizens believe they are better off financially than
they were even a year ago. And, according to a recent NBC News/Wall
Street Journal poll, a staggering 28 percent of all U.S. citizens believe this
country is headed in the right direction.
It’s truly frightening, but what
you see right now could be the best it will ever be. We are on a
precipice of a great economic collapse, and it is quickly approaching!. When it
strikes the majority of the middle class, it is going to get even worse.
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