My wife was at the Stanford Shopping Center (the huge upscale mall in Palo Alto, CA) one night this week an commented how empty it was. This is ground-zero of the high-tech explosion where there aren’t enough workers for all the available jobs.
I noticed the same thing last weekend at a mall here in NJ; I normally couldn’t park so close to the doors any time of the year, and yet was probably 25 yards from the entrance. When I commented on this to my wife, she thought it was because it was early in the Christmas shopping season.
Years ago I would be in various pubs & restaurants and was shocked at how managers were in absolute denial that their businesses were facing a long-term decline in business as northern NJ circled the drain economically. Each would have various excuses, that became increasingly lame as the months and years passed; their clientele had either run out of money or simply moved to greener pastures, and their business models were no longer working. Even the businesses that catered to our huge illegal alien population suffered as those that were here for work instead of freebies moved on; the corners where “day laborers” had congregated in the past have been vacant for years now. In good times they had been a gold mine for bars and restaurants that served their favorite food/drinks (as many were single young men); once they left, there were few people left that drank Coronas or ate fast-food-type Latino fare.
Atlanta, south and central Florida area malls have been - well, not “empty” but a very, very long way from being “filled up”. That was true on Black Friday, Monday, Wednesday, and the past weekend.