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Cyber Monday attracts an estimated 107 million shoppers
That's a 10% increase from last year, the National Retail Federation says.
So why is this deflationary you might ask?
Amazon.com
Full time employees: 24,300
2009 revenue: $24,509,000,000
Revenue per employee: $1,008,600
Employees per $100k sales: 0.10
Sears
Full time employees: 322,000
2009 revenue: $44,043,000,000
Revenue per employee: $136,780
Employees per $100k sales: 0.73
Macy's
Full time employees: 161,000
2009 revenue: $23,489,000,000
Revenue per employee: $145,894
Employees per $100k sales: 0.69
Amazon.com requires just 1/7th the number of employees per shopping dollar spent.
The following chart shows the failure of the exponential growth in retail trade employment. I have added an exponential trend line based on the 51 years of data from January 1939 to January 1990.
Click to enlarge.
Now let's look at the difference between the two.
Click to enlarge.
We are now over 8 million jobs below the long-term trend. I think it goes a long way towards explaining the rise in unemployment in general. In fact, if those 8 million jobs actually existed then employment would look fairly normal.
If the Ben Bernanke's, the Paul Krugman's, and the Jim Cramer's of the "new world" think they can create jobs by inflating the price of crude oil, then I would argue that they've got another thing coming. All it is going to do is encourage people to shop from home even more and accelerate the demise of our country's many shopping malls.
September 21, 2010
Mad Money: Low Interest Rates? Buy These Stocks
And because the Fed kept interest rates low and companies are delivering strong earnings, he thinks this is a "greenlight" for the kind of job creation that would help spur an economic recovery.
I turned bearish in 2004 due to low interest rates and rising debt loads. He might not realize it, but he's indirectly telling me to remain bearish.
November 29, 2010
Mad Money: Cramer Picks His Fave Department Store
So what criteria seperates [sic] Macy's from the rest?
In my opinion, over the long-term picking Macy's is a bit like picking your favorite Titanic movie.
Perhaps I am wrong to think this way. In any event, I have been bearish for 6 years. I think it may very well be a permanent condition.
See Also:
Retail Trade Bubble
Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Retail Trade
7 comments:
As a side note, the growth of FedEx has not closed the employment gap.
FedEx
Full time employees: 217,000
Lately there has been a proliferation of cyber security ads run by colleges in the metro areas of TV channels that we have on to get the latest bubble news. You didn't account for cyber thieves, programmers, etc., etc. who now make this country great!
Nobody cares about the price of fuel, cause Cramer told all his followers to buy gold and we all know it goes up to the sky and is true money!! Party on!!
Anonymous,
You didn't account for cyber thieves, programmers, etc., etc. who now make this country great!
I forgot about the job opportunities created by securing the insecurable!
Nobody cares about the price of fuel, cause Cramer told all his followers to buy gold and we all know it goes up to the sky and is true money!! Party on!!
I'm taking off my aluminum foil hat for a moment so please bear with me. I'm likely to say something conspiratorial.
We spend maybe 5% of our day thinking about fuel, but has anyone given any thought to how much time fuel spends thinking about us? ;)
We spend maybe 5% of our day thinking about fuel, but has anyone given any thought to how much time fuel spends thinking about us? ;)<<
Best to turn down the sound and know that the numbers painters have run out of ink on occasion. Nobody can really know when.
Off topic:
Mark I was looking up some info on Fallout New Vegas's new DLC to be released this month when I came across this:
http://tinyurl.com/35lnyq4
It's something about the Air Force's 1760 PS3s all hooked up to form the world's 33rd largest computer, pretty interesting I thought, and then I remembered something you wrote awhile back about letting some organization 'borrow' your PS3 (when your not using it) to work on some problem or another.
Are you still involved with that?
And if so I just wonder how many PS3's and other computers they are pulling together, it would have to be bigger than the Air Force's 1760 I would think.
watchtower,
My first PS3 died. The cooling fan stopped coming on.
This latest generation PS3 is much better though. Much bigger hard drive and much quieter. At least some good came of it.
They say it is safe to run a PS3 24/7 (and it should be). That said, I'm not willing to push my luck again. They had full use of the first one but now I'm done.
I just checked their site. There are 29,521 active PS3 systems. However, active is defined as those which have returned WUs within 50 days. They don't just use PS3s though. They are on a variety of platforms (although few match the raw processing power of a PS3).
Client statistics by OS
Oops. I stopped reading too soon.
"Active PS3's are defined as those which have returned WUs within 15 days."
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