Here Are All the Signs Investors Are Growing More Worried About Retail
- Retail REITs lag behind S&P 500 by about 19 percentage points
- Avis Budget shares tumble in after-hours trading on guidance
What the July U.S. Jobs Report Signals About the Economy
The latest U.S. jobs report laid bare some of the sobering tribulations faced by American retailers: they’ve shed jobs on an annual basis for the first time since 2010, when the sector’s employment was just starting to rebound following the Great Recession.
The challenges are mounting as Amazon.com Inc. continues to grab market share in a secular trend in favor of e-commerce at the same time that cyclical consumption, the engine of U.S. growth, may be sputtering. Big-ticket spending items like autos have seen a marked slowdown in sales during 2017. And even maintaining the current pace of spending growth could prove difficult for U.S. consumers: the household savings rate is at a nine-year low.