Let's see, cutting overall weekly employee hours for stores nationwide, suspending tuition reimbursement, no pay increases for hourly employees this year, suspension of bonuses for store managers. That's the short list that I know for fact. It doesn't affect my job so far as I'm the only one in the store that does my job and I can easily pinch hit other positions, but they cannot fill mine.
As to why? In weekly conference calls the DM asks store managers for their ideas for the decline in traffic and conversion rates and... silence. They don't want to say.