Thursday, September 25, 2014

The Retail Employment Party Ended in 2000

The following chart shows the Index of Aggregate Weekly Hours of Retail Production and Nonsupervisory Employees (2002 = 100). I have added an exponential trend line in red (January 1972 to January 2000).


Click to enlarge.

BLS: Occupational Outlook Handbook: Retail Sales Workers

Employment of retail salespersons has traditionally grown with the overall economy, and this trend is expected to continue. Population growth will increase retail sales and demand for these workers.



Gallows humor. Sigh.

Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Indexes of Aggregate Weekly Hours of Production and Nonsupervisory Employees: Retail Trade

4 comments:

  1. Does seem like 2000 was a turning point for many economic indicators. Maybe those Y2K doomsters were right.

    Fred

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Matrix called it in 1999:

    "Which is why the Matrix was re-designed to this: the peak of your
    civilization."

    ReplyDelete