According to Michael Mandel in BusinessWeek online, there are some interesting employment trends.
True, the drop in retail employment over the past year is not very big -- only 13,000 workers, or 0.1%. But it's very unusual to see the decline come at a time when employment in the rest of the economy is rising. Historically retailers hire when overall jobs are expanding. Yet this time around, they are being very cautious.
Combine this with my previous post, and this is something to watch.
The data is in.
Retailers have fewer workers than they did a year ago, according to the latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Meanwhile, shoppers keep filling the malls, with retail sales up by 8% over the same period.
Hmmm. One place we might be able to go to look for some cause and effect is...in your mirror. Did you place an online order recently?
So what's going on here? In part, the decline in retail employment may reflect the rapid growth of online retailers, which have much higher sales per worker than their brick-and-mortar counterparts. E-commerce sales are up by 25% over the last year, to $25 billion. That's a lot of purchases that no longer need in-person sales assistance.
Although, e-commerce accounts for less than 3% of all retail sales, so to simply blame online shoppers is a bit of a red herring.
So, is it just hard to find people that want to work retail, or something else.
...if retailers were really serious about adding more workers, we'd expect to see retail wages rising -- and that's not what is happening. Hourly earnings in retailing went up by a only a measly 13 cents over the past year, for a 1% gain. That's way less than the 3.5% increase in hourly earnings for the economy as a whole.
Maybe retailers are uncertain about the future of the economy. No one is quite sure right now. So here's Mr. Mandel's advice:
Of course, if there is a general economic slowdown, consumers will have less money in their pockets, and the shortage of sales help won't be such a big problem. But for now, take your running shoes and be prepared to chase down that salesperson.
OK, I guess.
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