The Retail Worker — the real victim of the Connected Society
A new class of unemployed workersAs more and more retail workers lose their jobs, a new class of unemployed and underemployed workers is emerging in America that’s larger and more geographically far-reaching than the coal industry Trump has vowed to revive.What does this class look like? Nearly half are women, about 17% are Hispanic or Latino, 12% are African-American, and 6% are Asian, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Most are between 25 and 54, with a median age of 38. On average, retail employees are paid about $10.87 an hour, or $22,600 annually, and cashiers are paid about $9.69 an hour, the data shows.The mining industry, by comparison, is about 80% male and 77% white, with a median age of 42.5 and a median hourly wage of $26.88.But coal miners and retail workers have something in common: Most don’t have a set of skills that’s easily transferable to another industry, which makes career transitions very challenging, according to Mark Cohen, the director of retail studies at Columbia Business School.”The coal miners are out of luck,” Cohen recently told Business Insider. “Retail workers are in the same boat.”
Read Full Article on Business Insider: Trump has been silent on retail job losses – Business Insider
The world of Thematic Investing could be summed up as simply looking at the cause and effect of demonstratable, on-going movements in the economy, demographics, psychographics, technologies, mixed in with regulatory mandates. In the case of e-commerce and our Connected Society investment theme, the headlines often look at the convenience and ease of shopping online (cause) with the predictable impact on traditional retailers being the brick and mortar retailers (effect). But the echo of that movement is the impact on the workers themselves, who not only find themselves without a job, but with a skill set not necessarily transferable to other jobs — which brings in our Tooling and ReTooling thematic and the ability for these workers to acquire new skills in order to maintain their employment.
Our two cents? Logistics. Until 3D printers are in every house and company, all those items have to get from the manufacturer to the warehouse and then out to the customer.
