By Katie Davis U .S. government data continue to show that traditional department stores are continuing to lose sales ground when compared to online retailers. Sales at all U.S. retailers increased 4.4 percent in December on an unadjusted basis from a year earlier, according to recently released Commerce Department figures. The Commerce Department figures show purchases at traditional department stores fell over 7 percent, making it 23 consecutive months of year-over-year declines for the sector. The news is very different for online and non-store retailers as they captured over 10 percent more sales and have shown double digit sector growth in 6 of the last 12 months. The government data follow poor sales results from many U.S.-based retailers, which say that dwindling mall traffic and consumers switching to the ease of shopping online is primarily to blame for industry’s performance. Online shopping ismore targeted, as customers are looking for a specific item which is far different from those that are heading to the traditional department stores at the mall. The consumers are more likely to pick up more impulse items than those consumers that are shopping online.
The shift toward online shopping is also having a effect on the labor market, with employment at non-discount department stores is down 45 percent from 2000, the number of e-commerce jobs over that same time period have increase 346 percent. It must be said that the Commerce Department numbers do not break down the differences in average hourly earnings between traditional department store and Internet-retail employees nor does it reference the fact that e-commerce jobs are still just a fraction of the millions of positions across all different kinds of merchants in the industry. To show that this industry trend is here to stay, Amazon. com Inc. recently announced that it plans to create more than 100,000 full-time positions in the U.S. in the next 18 months as the world’s largest online retailer further expands into new categories.
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SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • FEBRUARY 2017
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