The Consequence Of Deserting Israel WR 14-97

God says I will bless those who bless my people and curse those who curse my people. The sobering facts below confirm what God says.

What an incredible shrinkage of jobs!

There are those who believe the U.S. economy is getting better, but unfortunately, this is far from the truth. Major retail chains are closing their doors all over the United States of America.  If the economy is improving, this would not be the case.

Because millions of people prefer to shop online for convenience, the rise in internet retail, such as Amazon, have greatly affected this outcome. However, this alone does not account for the loss the economy is suffering as a whole. There are many reasons why we are seeing a great retail ‘apocalypse’.

Believe it or not, retail professionals state that the internet alone only accounts for approximately 20 percent of this decline.  The vast majority of this decline is a result of the slow, steady death of the middle class U.S. consumer.

For five years in a row, median household income has dropped, yet the cost of living and bills just keep piling up.  The amount of disposable income the average American has available is continuously shrinking at an unprecedented rate, which is not good news for the retail industry.  Unfortunately, this may only the beginning.

Retail experts now project that the pace of store closings is going to accelerate over the course of the next decade.

Below is a mind-blowing list of facts regarding the U.S. retail apocalypse, and keep in mind as you look it over, it isn’t just going to get worse, but it is going to get worse very soon:

01.  Right now, approximately one billion square feet of retail space is sitting vacant in the United States.

02.  Just last month, Radio Shack announced they were going to close over one thousand of their stores.

03.  Just last month, Staples announced it was going to close 225 of its stores.

04.  For 13 quarters in a row now, same-store sales at Office Depot have declined.

05.  J.C. Penny, who has been slowly dying for years, recently announced their plans to close 33 more of its stores.

06.  Add to that, J.C. Penny lost 586 million dollars during the second quarter in 2013 alone.

07.  Since 2010, Sears has closed down approximately 300 stores, and CNN has been reporting that Sears is expected to shutter another 500 Sears and Kmart locations soon.

08.  For 27 quarters in a row now, overall sales numbers have declined at Sears.

09.  Target has recently announced that it plans on eliminating 475 jobs and will refrain from filling 700 empty positions.

10.  It has been projected that Aéropostale will close approximately 175 stores over the next few years.

11.  Macy’s announced that it will be shutting down five stores, as well as eliminating 2,500 jobs.

12.  By 2016, the Children’s Place will be closing down 125 of its ‘weakest’ stores.

13.  In Canada, Best Buy recently closed approximately 50 of its stores.

14.  Blockbuster, a video rental giant, completely shut down every one of its stores.

15.  It is projected that U.S. supermarket sales will drop by 1.7 percent this year as the overall population increases.

16.  Fast food chain giant, McDonald’s reported that sales at established U.S. locations dropped down 3.3 percent in January.

17.  American TV, a home appliance chain in the Midwest, plans on shutting down all eleven stores.

18.  Walmart is apparently strugging at the present.  A prominent Walmart executive recently made a shocking statement:

David Cheesewright, CEO of Walmart International was speaking at the same presentation, and he pointed out that Walmart would try to protect its market share in the US – where the company had just issued an earnings warning. But most of the growth would have to come from its units outside the US. I mean, via these share buybacks?

Alas, outside the US too, economies were limping along at best, and consumers were struggling and the operating environment was tough. “We’re seeing economies under stress pretty much everywhere we operate,” Cheesewright admitted. 

19.  A recent CNBC article titled, “Time To Close Walmart Stores? Analysts Think So”, recommended Walmart close approximately 100 ‘underperforming’ supercenters in rural lcations throughout the U.S.

20.  Retail consultant, Howard Davidowitz projects that up to at least  half of all shopping malls in the U.S. might shut down within the next 15 to 20 years.

Within 15 to 20 years, retail consultant Howard Davidowitz expects as many as half of America’s shopping malls to fail. He predicts that only upscale shopping centers with anchors like Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus will survive. 

Unless the U.S. economy begins producing large numbers of steady, good middle class jobs, things are not going to improve, unfortunately.  And, this just isn’t happening.

During the month of February, we were told that the U.S. economy added 175,000 jobs, which sounds great until you understand that it takes nearly that many jobs alone, each month, just to keep up with the population growth.  According to CNS News, the percentage of unemployed Americans grew faster than the number of employed Americans in February of 2014.  And, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the number of unemployed individuals age 16 and up increased by 223,000 in February.

Also, in February, there were 10,459,000 people, age 16 and over, who were unemployed, which was up 223,000 from the previous month when there had been 10,236,000 unemployed.

In the meantime, the labor force participation rate remains at a 35 year low, and a staggering 70 percent of all Americans who do not belong to the labor force are below the age of 55 years old. 

What’s more, things appear even more depressing when you check out the labor force participation rate for males alone.  In 1950, the labor force participation rate for men was approximately 87 percent.  Sadly, today it has plummeted below 70 percent, which is a brand new all-time record low.

Unfortunately, jobs have become scarce.  There are not enough available jobs per person in the United States of America.  Check out the below chart to see the actual percentage of working age American citizens that have a job, and see for yourself how drastically it has changed since the turn of the millennium.

There is no doubt the employment-population ratio has greatly declined during the last recession, and it has continued below 59 percent since the latter half of 2009. This confirms that an economic recovery is not in the cards.  If we were going to have a recovery, we would have surely had one by now.

Due to the fact that just are not enough jobs, more highly educated workers are taking the jobs that were once held by less educated employees, and then knocking them out of the labor force altogether.  And, as a side note, many of our jobs are being taken by foreigners who will work for less wages.

The following is an excerpt from a recent article in Bloomberg News:

Recent college graduates are ending up in more low-wage and part-time positions as it’s become harder to find education-level appropriate jobs, according to a January study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The share of Americans ages 22 to 27 with at least a bachelor’s degree in jobs that don’t require that level of education was 44 percent in 2012, up from 34 percent in 2001, the study found. Due to the fact that there are not enough middle class jobs to go around, the middle class has been steadily shrinking. In 2008, 53 percent of all Americans considered themselves to be “middle class”. Today, only 44 percent of all Americans consider themselves to be “middle class”.

This is a phenomenal shift in only six years!

Regardless of what we are being told by politicians and mainstream media, something is obviously fundamentally wrong with the current state of our economy. The majority of people do actually realize this.

According to recent surveys, only 35 percent of all U.S. citizens believe they are better off financially than they were even a year ago.  And, according to a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, a staggering 28 percent of all U.S. citizens believe this country is headed in the right direction.

It’s truly frightening, but what you see right now could be the best it will ever be.  We are on a precipice of a great economic collapse, and it is quickly approaching!. When it strikes the majority of the middle class, it is going to get even worse.