5 June 2023
The question that came up after my detailed report on jobs by employer category was this: Why were jobs in the “retail trade” in May, at 15.55 million, still down from the peak in 2016? And why were they about level with where they’d been at the end of 2007 before the Great Recession, even as total jobs at all “establishments” have grown by about 13% since 2007 and by 8% since 2016? Turns out, jobs in the “retail trade” are on a structural decline, despite surging retail sales, in part because of the way jobs in the “retail trade” are defined.