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Ooooh... Mr. Grammar Police. That's absolutely worth calling someone an idiot.

Must be that time of the month...

take it up with my commie friend tailgater. It's his idea.

If we can't all be rich, we can be equally poor!
Socialism NOW.
Com-rad.

Layoffs in aisle 4! Retailers are big job killers
Pink is the most fashionable color in retail these days. Unfortunately, that's pink as in pink slips.

Ralph Lauren (RL) was the latest big brand name consumer company to announce layoffs, saying on Tuesday that it was looking to cut about 1,200 jobs -- 8% of its full-time workforce.

That news follows recent layoff announcements from Macy's (M), Nordstrom (JWN) and Walmart (WMT).

Several other retailers -- including Gap (GPS), Sears (SHLD) and J.C. Penney (JCP) -- have announced plans to shut stores, which could lead to even more retail employees being let go.

And then there are the bankruptcies. Pacific Sunwear and Aeropostale both filed for Chapter 11 protection in the past few months. And Sports Authority is going out of business.

Much of the pain in retail is due to the upheaval in the apparel industry.

According to data from the U.S. government, nearly 13,000 jobs have been lost at clothing and clothing accessories stores in the past three months. Fast fashion upstarts are making life more difficult for some of the older mall-based stalwarts.

And more than 38,000 job cuts have been announced in the overall retail sector so far this year, according to data from job placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. That's a nearly 40% increase from this time a year ago.

Only the energy sector has announced more layoffs this year, as low crude prices continue to cause turmoil at oil companies.

Credit Suisse analysts estimated in April that this could be the worst year for retail layoffs since 2010.

Still, there are some bright spots for retail workers.

Furniture and home furnishings retailers have added jobs. So have building material and garden equipment stores.
The strong housing market is the reason for that. Home Depot (HD) and Lowe's (LOW) both recently reported solid earnings and sales.

Car dealers and auto parts stores are counted as being part of the retail sector by the government too. Those industries have also been adding jobs.

Despite disappointing auto sales last month, retailers like Advance Auto Parts (AAP), Autozone (AZO) and O'Reilly (ORLY) have held up reasonably well.

But the unemployment rate for the retail sector -- while down from the beginning of the year -- is still 5.4%. That's higher than the overall unemployment rate of 4.7%.

This may be yet another sign of the rise of Amazon (AMZN, Tech30) -- and the impact that online/mobile shopping is having on brick-and-mortar retailers in general.

The so-called nonstore retail sector, a group tracked by the government that includes e-commerce, mail order catalogs and TV infomercials, has added nearly 5,000 jobs so far this year.

http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/08/investing/retail-job-cuts-layoffs/index.html

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I'm sure the raise in minimum wage is not contributing to this at all.

How does that have anything to do with economy or the minimum raise?

Hello... More and more people are buying clothes online. Notice job increases in online retailers.

Notice increased retail jobs in home improvement, garden and furniture... The types of goods not generally purchased online.

It's like you don't even read your own articles.

Do you really have to put me in the position to argue AGAINST minimum wage with brew and tony, and then AGAINST stupid articles blaming everything on minimum wages with you?

Yeah... so is Hillary, right? Or Bernie?

you could pizz on Victor's leg and he'd argue it was raining with you...

I think drafter is trying to give me HepC

I dunno... Trying to pizz on my leg....

Huh... Now you're singing The Weather Girls?

I wonder about you drafter. Last time I heard about grown men dancing and singing to that song while peeing on each other, someone ended up with the Hep

Sounds like you're one of those freaks...

I always miss the sign up.

More like fix Bush's mess.

And fixed healthcare.

And the stock market........

Dude
Anything can be purchased online. The fact is that many people purchase online to avoid the state and local sales tax involved. I'm not even going to mention some of the online cigar retailers that turn over their clients for taxes to be collected by the states from which they buy from. Online purchases will change once the guberment insitututes taxes to be paid on all online purchases, which is already happening. It's the only reason I buy cigars (just one product) online. In CO there's over 40% sin tax placed on all toabacco products. That's what makes a Padron 2000 Maduro that used to cost me $4.00 in PA cost $10 in Colorado. When there's not a B&M or local business within 300 miles of your area you have no choice but to purchase online. From what I understand there are many States that institute even higher sin taxes

Can retailers (big or small) afford to pay people $15/hr to stand around and serve as "Sales Representatives" of their business. Say all you want about the politics and business practices of companies like Target and Walmart. But when they are a local business in your area and employ hundreds within your community, you have to consider the "big store" as a local business. When a business like Walmart or Sports Authority closes in your town, local people suffer. There's not only the loss of jobs, but the loss of taxes being collected by the local town. There's not only the lack of need to employee those folks who serve you, but also the lack of taxes and income in the community that results in the need to increase local taxes. My town has a local airport that serves the Vail Valley. But regardless of whether there was increase in the tourism and flights to our area, as a result of the drop in fuel prices and the reduction in taxes collected on that fuel, our town faced a 3% increase in Sales Tax. An increase of 3% in sales tax is huge in any respect and anywhere you live. We are facing almost an 11% Sales Tax. Is that what you support? After having to pay the federal gubermant almost 30% of my income in federal taxes, I sure as fuq don't want to pay another 11% in local sales tax. Do you get it now???

NO. I don't think the closures where only in States with minimum wage increases. Open your eyes. The trend to replace minimum wage workers is happening all over our Country and World. Drive into a fast food restaurant, have your order taken by a computer kiosk, then have it prepared by a robotic processing system to cook and wrap your food to go. Moving to an online system where all orders are proecessed by a "robotic" system does not create jobs.

I would rather have a Sears, Target, or Walmart in our town/community than a "fullfillment center" filled with employing illegal immigrants to process orders received through an online ordering system. Press 1 for English!

If you don't understand that raising the minimum wage, a minimum wage that was institued in in the late '30's by FDR to protect young adolescent workers from being tasked advantage of... then that's on you. Minimum wage was never intended to serve as a "living wage".

If you're not happy with your minimum wage job, earn a better one.

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Hoping banderl forgives any misspellings or grammatical errors. Not looking forward to a semantical argument.
It is what it is. Without evening mentioning the cost of Obamacare to employees or their employers.

Funny. The big box stores killed Main Street stores and everyone was upset. The replaced live able wage jobs with minimum. Now I guess we accept that as part of evolution. As long as the next great thing doesn't kill the big box stores etc etc.

Some fought against the industrial revolution. We are in another one..... Different name, different type but it's here

As for minimum wage hike you'll never hear me arguing for it, but the arguments against it are incoherent at best. If a robot can replace a human at a job the difference between 8/hour and 15/hour likely won't drive that decision at all. There is a calculation but the robot will likely be more expensive short term and cheaper long term. SAMs are testing sample machines now.

I'm not arguing anything at with anyone. Things are changing. Get on the bus.

The problem is all inside your head
She said to me..
The answer is easy if you
Take it logically....

I still wonder what the people who worked hard for years & years to earn $15 an hour think about this... Surely their hourly rate didn't double too....

Tail I agree with you on the timing but I think it's a matter of prolonging the inevitable anyway. Maybe it's good to encourage automation and efficiencies. Competition breeds such things and I'm for it.

I don't care if a human hands me a Big Mac or if it shoots out of a machine. It sucks either way.

As for minimum wage I don't care about the issue. I'm certainly not for a fed action but states/localities can do whatever their people want.

In the end automation

Says the guys who states that SRV was better than Hendrix.
Talk about mental disorders.

A coherent argument against minimum wage hikes is very simple. There are a number of menial jobs out there that no matter how proficiently performed cannot yield enough value added labor to justify these double-digit minimum wage hike suggestions. The effect of this is that those that fall below this threshold will no longer be employable because their labor cannot sustain the amount that their employment would cost their employer.

You've arbitrarily defined what a living wage is. That's not any different than stogie fans simplification.

Why is the wage rate you define the amount of money any person deserves to do any job?

Ok Vic, do you agree with the government option on the poverty line?
Or do you think there is not standard of living we would/should call a "living"?

I was using Walmart as an example. Please give me and example of the full time job that will never be worth a living wage.

Maybe you don't agree, but I think medium and large buisness need to support their communities.

How about data entry? Literally someone who has to look at a number or an address or something on paper and type the same thing into a predefined field in a program. Possibly the most mind numbing work possible. Also something which requires almost no skill at all, and the value is just that the data is in an electronic format.

How about cleaning staff? Sure, cleaning has a value, but the more expensive it is, the less value cleanliness has. Suddenly instead of having the floors mopped nightly it's every other night, and the people performing the task get less work.

Not sure where you're going with this, or if it was meant for me.

Different types of businesses gain efficiencies differently. Price drops occur for many different reasons. The biggest difference between most small vs. large business within the same sector is an ability to absorb market shifts.
Raw materials go up for 6 months? The large company has inventory capacity and longer term contract pricing.
Wages spike? A workforce of 500 can be pared down easier than a workforce of 5.
Automation is easier to justify on order volumes in the millions vs. order volumes in the thousands.

It's not an unfair advantage. Small business offer a lot that a big guy can't.
It's just that a wage increase (the subject at hand) impacts the small shop exponentially more.

Keeping with the fast food analogy:
McDonalds might invent a robot cashier and burger flipper.
Do you think my brother's sandwich shop in Boston could justify one?