The Main Streets of American cities are filled with empty storefronts...
While the Walmarts and MickyD's are staying in business...the lesser stores are folding like never before... Entire complexes are sitting empty.
Basically, your mom and pop shops are throwing in the towel...as the endebted American consumers dash from Walmart to MickyD's...then home---to watch their $100 per month cable TV shows...which is about all they can afford these days.
The rather persistant odd declines in "retail hiring" are primarily due to this "empty storefront" phenomenon.
It should also be noted that empty stores are not limited to small and medium sized towns in fly over country...
I was in downtown Salt Lake City recently...and their downtown is totally empty! Salt Lake doesn't even have enough bums downtown that other cities have... Salt Lake's downtown is surreal in it's total abandonment. So much for the Winter Olympic's boost...
Other cities that were "booming" like Vegas and Phoenix also have plenty of available retail space in the main strip malls. Furthermore, it's not because stores are moving to "newer locations".... although that used to explain some of it.
The total lack of retail hiring shows that this phenomenon is much deeper than that.
There is a decline in retail sales in the US that is caused by the lack of "living wage" jobs for about 80% of the population.
The Walmart's and MickyD's of the world will be the last to be hit by this decline of the American Consumer.
But note well that Home Depot and Lowes are starting to get hit now... Food outlets are always to last to feel the declines... And Walmart is mostly sellling food, not fashions, in many locations these days...
But the EARLY WARINGS OF SOMETHING MORE AND QUITE SERIOUS...can be see in the empty storefronts that line most American Main Streets these days...
