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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...

Brick-and-mortar retailers have been suffering from slow economic activity for years, as well as from increased competition from online retailers. The rise in store closings is a prominent sign of their struggles. Weakened companies cannot afford the real estate and personnel costs that go along with supporting hundreds of unprofitable locations. The clearest proof of the problem was Radio ShackÂ’s recent decision to close more than 1,000 stores. Radio Shack is hardly alone. During that last several years Gap has closed 20% of its locations. Even MacyÂ’s, which has forecast strong earnings and is considered the most successful of the...

On February 27th, Gordon Brothers Group, a global advisory, restructuring and investment firm was awarded the store closing process for all locations by the bankruptcy court. Store closing sales will begin on March 1st and will involve significant discounts on all merchandise, as well as store furniture, fixtures and equipment in order to wind down company operations. “Our employees continue to do a tremendous job maintaining high quality standards and they are dedicated to fully serving our customers during this transition,” David Minnix, president of Dots, said. “We appreciate the continued support of our valued customers over the years and...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)FRAMINGHAM, Mass. (AP) — Staples will close up to 225 stores in North America by the end of next year as it seeks to trim about $500 million in costs annually by 2015. The nation’s largest office-supply retailer said Thursday that nearly half of its sales are now generated online, so it will aggressively cut costs to become more efficient....

If the U.S. economy is getting better, then why are major retail chains closing thousands of stores? If we truly are in an "economic recovery", then why do sales figures continue to go down for large retailers all over the country? Without a doubt, the rise of Internet retailing giants such as Amazon.com have had a huge impact. Today, there are millions of Americans that actually prefer to shop online. Personally, when I published my novel I made it solely available on Amazon. But Internet shopping alone does not account for the great retail apocalypse that we are witnessing. In...

The first time I ever saw a Wal-Mart I was a grad student getting my MBA down in Tallahassee, FL. One opened up down the road from my apartment and I was immediately taken by the big bright stores with lots of stuff and what seemed to be pretty low prices. In class I learned the secrets to Wal-Mart’s success in its niche of “Always low prices”. It demanded efficiencies from its suppliers. It became fanatical about using information technology to optimize its sourcing and distribution channels. It paid its employees the community average or sometimes slightly more, but never...

U.S. stocks fell sharply on Thursday after economic reports had more Americans than projected filing for jobless claims last week and retail sales unexpectedly falling in January. The Labor Department reported applications for unemployment benefits climbed by 8,000 to 339,000, higher than the 300,000 projected by economists. Separately, the Commerce Department reported retail sales fell 0.4 percent last month from December, versus expectations they would be flat.

Amazon.com Inc. and The Home Depot Inc., both giants in their respective retail fields, are heralding the arrival of spring with major hiring surges. E-commerce king Amazon said it will take on more than 2,500 full-time workers in several states as the company’s stable of fulfillment centers expands. The employees will be hired to pick, pack and ship customer orders at facilities in Virginia, Kansas, South Carolina, Washington and Tennessee. The online retailer said it hired more than 20,000 fulfillment center workers last year and that the median pay at the sites is 30% higher than the pay at traditional...

The Trader Joe’s grocery chain has withdrawn plans to build a store in the heart of a predominantly black neighborhood after a black leadership group fought the move. The Portland Development Commission was set to give the grocer a large discount on property that had been vacant for years, pricing it at just over $500,000, down from an appraised value of $2.9 million, according to The Oregonian. The Portland African American Leadership Forum sent a scathing letter in December to city leaders, saying the plan would price residents out of the area and the group“remains opposed to any development in...

CVS Caremark is kicking the habit of selling tobacco products at its more than 7,600 drugstores nationwide as it focuses more on providing health care. The nation's second-largest drugstore chain said Wednesday that it will phase out cigarettes, cigars and chewing tobacco by Oct. 1, a move that will cost about $2 billion in annual revenue but won't affect its 2014 earnings forecast. CVS Caremark leaders say removing tobacco will help them grow the company's business of working with doctors, hospitals and other care providers to improve customers' health.

If it seems like it was exactly a year ago that turmoiling retailer Radioshack shut down 500 stores due to lack of consumer interest in its wares (and or consumer disposable cash), it is because it was. So how does Radioshack demonstrate its morbid sense of humor on the one year anniversary of said announcement? Well, by closing another 500, or about 12% of the retailer's total 4500 outlets currently in existence. The WSJ reports that the company which once was the butt of all LBO-rumor jokes (and still is, only this time in the context of an M&A-rumor...

Wal-Mart stores and its Sam's Club chain are apparently hurting from the cuts in the federal food stamp program that went into effect in early November. The impact from the government's reduction in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits had a much greater effect on the world's largest retailer than originally expected by the company. Combined with consumer fears about the economy and winter storms that also hurt store business nationwide, the cuts made a bad situation for Wal-Mart even worse, according to a statement from Wal-Mart Chief Financial Officer Charles Holley carried by the Associated Press. The estimated $5...

Michelle Obama is getting a new ally in her campaign to get kids to eat more fruits and vegetables. The first lady was expected to announce Thursday that the Subway sandwich chain will spend $41 million over three years to encourage finicky young eaters to eat more food that comes out of the ground or grows on trees. The announcement was being made at a Subway shop near the White House. Subway will only offer a kids' menu that mirrors federal standards for school lunches. That includes offering apples on the side and low-fat or nonfat plain milk or water...

Walmart announced on Friday that about 2,300 Sam’s Club employees would be laid off, the latest in a drumbeat of retail job cuts to start off the new year. Bill Durling, a Sam’s Club spokesman, said the layoffs would target a combination of salaried assistant managers and hourly employees. Certain positions, like telephone attendants, will be eliminated. “We realized we had pretty much the same club structure whether a club had $50 million in revenue or $100 million in revenue,” Mr. Durling said of the distribution of assistant managers. “What we’re trying to do is balance our resources.” Sam’s Club...

Get ready for the next era in retail—one that will be characterized by far fewer shops and smaller stores. On Tuesday, Sears said that it will shutter its flagship store in downtown Chicago in April. It's the latest of about 300 store closures in the U.S. that Sears has made since 2010. The news follows announcements earlier this month of multiple store closings from major department stores J.C. Penney and Macy's. Further signs of cuts in the industry came Wednesday, when Target said that it will eliminate 475 jobs worldwide, including some at its Minnesota headquarters, and not fill 700...

Target Corp. said Tuesday that it will stop offering health insurance to its part-time employees because new online health exchanges offer workers an opportunity to buy coverage. The Minneapolis-based retailer will give each worker $500 to help buy health insurance, and has arranged for one-on-one consultations with benefits manager Towers Watson to help with the transition. The retailer announced the decision through its online site, “A Bullseye View: Behind the Scenes at Target,” in a Q&A with Jodee Kozlak, Target’s executive vice president of human resources. In the article, Kozlak acknowledged the disruption to workers. But she said the exchanges...

Police have arrested two Mexican illegal aliens on fraud charges in the first arrests tied to the December Target credit card breach -- a stark reminder of the frequent involvement of illegal immigration and identity theft in the U.S.On Sunday, Police arrested 27-year-old Mary Carmen Garcia and 28-year-old Daniel Guardiola Dominguez both from Monterrey as they tried to cross into the U.S. from Reynosa with 96 fraudulent credit credit cards in their possession, said Police Chief Victor Rodriguez. Account information stolen during the Target security breach was used to produce the credit cards. The illegals, both from Monterrey, Mexico, used cards...

The news around shopping during the holiday season was dominated by two separate stories. One talked about how traffic to brick-and-mortar stores was well below expectations, and that these retailers were forced to discount tremendously to drive sales. The other talked about how an enormous late surge in packages coming from e-commerce companies overwhelmed the capacity of UPS and, to a lesser extent, FedEx, and caused many of these packages to arrive after Christmas. But, to me, these two stories are not at all separate, they simply reflect different sides of the same narrative: We’re in the midst of a...

Yesterday afternoon, JCPenney announced it would be laying off around 2,500 employees and shuttering 33 underperforming stores around the country. Want to know if your local JCP made the cut?

Last weekend, Target finally disclosed at least one cause of the massive data breach that exposed personal and financial information on more than 110 million customers: Malicious software that infected point-of-sale systems at Target checkout counters. Today’s post includes new information about the malware apparently used in the attack, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter.