jobs – R&R – Reachout and Rebuild

Trump’s Economic Fallout

David Posnett — Mon, 05 Oct 2020 15:50:37 +0000

Guestwords in the East Hampton Star: Trump’s Economic Fallout for Suffolk County and Long Island

By John Tepper Marlin and Steven Newman October 1, 2020

President Trump’s three main economic initiatives have been radical 2017 cuts in taxes (at the expense of states and localities), unprecedented high tariffs on Chinese goods, and “deregulation” of federal agencies (entailing rejection of science-based programs). These initiatives have turned Washington, D.C., and the country upside down. How has this worked out? Following are some outcomes.

Mr. Trump’s denial of Covid-19 gives him ownership of its economic impact: The virus is not just an act of God. Mr. Trump’s knowing denial of its threat and refusal to recommend wearing masks immediately was a betrayal of his country. The pandemic is a national challenge just as much as the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center towers. An early science-based national response would have greatly reduced the huge negative economic impact.

The corporate tax cuts did not deliver on business investment: The main idea behind the 2017 Tax Act was to reduce the top federal tax rate on corporations from 35 percent to 25 percent. At the last minute, the law, which skipped customary hearings and staff analysis, took the tax rate down to 21 percent, even lower than its major advocates had asked for. Mr. Trump claimed the law would close tax loopholes, about which his newly uncovered tax returns show him to be informed. But few loopholes were closed by the 2017 law. He said businesses would invest the money and thereby create jobs. But after a few months, corporations switched to using the money to buy back their stock, which made a negligible contribution to job creation.

The impact of a fiscal change on the economy is measured by the “fiscal multiplier” — the change in gross domestic product for each dollar of change in tax cuts or spending. A 2015 Congressional Budget Office analysis concludes that fiscal multipliers are more successful for spending programs than tax cuts, for lower-income than for higher-income taxpayers, and for periods of recession than for booms. A widely cited fiscal multiplier for corporate tax cuts is only 0.32, compared with multipliers of 1.71 for an increase in food stamps, 1.55 for extending unemployment benefits, and 1.44 for infrastructure investment.

Tax cuts for individuals: The Tax Act substantially reduced tax rates for the top personal income brackets. When new money gets into the hands of average people, they spend it, because they have real needs that are not being met. This is not true for the very rich. Nevertheless, Mr. Trump argued that tax breaks should go to highest-income taxpayers. Policies that increase unemployment benefits, child credits, and food stamps are not only more equitable, they also generate more jobs.

The Tax Act’s cap on the SALT deduction hit New York State hard: The lowering of the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent in 2017 was paid for in part by a radical cap on the deductibility of state and local taxes (SALT) at $10,000 per taxpaying unit, whether single or married and filing jointly. This cap was deliberately targeted at higher-tax blue states. New York State has suffered the most, as indicated by the July jobs data, the latest we have. Jobs were down from a year earlier in every one of the nation’s 49 metro areas with a 2010 census population of 1 million or more. They are below the level of five years ago in more than half of these metro areas.

The five worst-hit metro areas in the country over five years include all three of the large New York State metros — Rochester, Buffalo, and New York City (which takes in a wide swath including Westchester, Nassau, and Suffolk Counties, northern New Jersey, and a piece of Pennsylvania). The SALT cap was a shock to state and local officials, who are scrambling to address lost tax revenues, and one of the hardest-hit cities is New York, which, unlike the federal government, must raise new taxes, cut spending, or borrow. That’s a choice between higher taxes, fewer employees, or postponed fiscal stress. Cutting the quality of services, from sanitation and health care to schools, will affect real estate values just as much as high taxes. Coupled with new interest in less-dense living to avoid exposure to Covid-19, this is making the East End of Long Island a beneficiary. But Suffolk can’t afford to let the engine of its prosperity falter.

The cap on the SALT deduction encourages moves by higher-income residents: The cap on the SALT deduction has made it more attractive and urgent for higher-income individuals to move to lower-tax states and communities. Blue-state residents have been moving to red states and will presumably seek to raise standards of education and other government services in their new locations. One silver lining is that it doesn’t take very many people moving from a populous blue state to increase electoral support for quality education in a small red state. Residents of New Jersey and New York are moving to Florida, while Californians are moving to Idaho and Nevada. Residents of New York City are moving to less-dense communities like East Hampton. Activism for better-quality services may generate some surprises in future elections.

Stressed states and localities need cash and are not getting it: This fiscal year has caught nearly every government by surprise. The CARES Act gave the Federal Reserve the right to lend to states and localities, but the Fed is acting as if the facility is intended as a last resort, for municipalities that can’t obtain private financing. But the municipal bond industry and many state laws favor long-term investment, not financing an operating deficit. Forcing municipalities to cut spending while the coronavirus crisis is still at our door is reverse Keynesian of the kind that exacerbated the worst years of the Great Depression.

Fortunately for the Town of East Hampton, the supervisor, Peter Van Scoyoc, and the town board have been able to keep the town functioning on a steady basis, but concentrating federal aid on businesses rather than local government means less fortunate communities face bleak options.

Tariffs on Chinese goods: Mr. Trump’s radical high-tariff moves are being paid not by Chinese producers but by American retailers and consumers, especially the fashion industry, which is suffering a knockout blow. China’s response to the U.S. tariffs has been to divert key supplies to Europe and has created shortages in this country — for example, in personal protective equipment and many medicines. China has meanwhile retaliated with tariffs on U.S. farm products. The relief program seems to have been concentrated on large agribusinesses, leaving small farmers without aid.

Deregulation has created new risks: The president’s science-denying efforts to roll back environmental, pharmaceutical, and other safety regulations have increased risks in each of these areas and have hampered a national response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Over all, the economy has fared poorly. Yet the stock market has had an astonishingly good run. The main reason is that some corporations have been buying back their stock and the Federal Reserve has been flooding the financial markets with liquidity to help banks make loans and stave off business bankruptcies. Historically, the total return on stocks in the S&P 500 since 1947 has been higher under Democratic presidents, 10.8 percent per year, versus a rate under Republicans of 5.6 percent per year. The top performance was under Presidents Clinton and Obama, while the most negative was under Nixon and George W. Bush.

It’s a case of an open spigot for big business and a parched earth for states and local governments and nonprofits. This has left New York City in a financial crisis, but East Hampton has been relatively unscathed.

John Tepper Marlin has lived in Springs since 1981. He was for 20 years a federal government economist and the chief economist to three New York City comptrollers. Steven Newman, a resident of Queens, was chief of staff and first deputy to two New York City comptrollers.

When the Forgotten Remain Forgotten, no one is Secure

David Posnett — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 20:05:48 +0000

The Covid-19 pandemic is putting the deepening class divide in America into stark relief.

Four new classes are emerging.

The Remotes: These are professional, managerial, and technical workers – an estimated 35% of the workforce – who are putting in long hours at their laptops, Zooming into conferences, scanning electronic documents, and collecting about the same pay as before the crisis. Many are bored or anxious, but they’re well off compared to the three other classes.

The Essentials: They’re about 30% of workers, including nurses, homecare and childcare workers, farm workers, food processors, truck drivers, warehouse and transit workers, drugstore employees, sanitation workers, police officers, firefighters, and the military. Too many Essentials lack adequate protective gear, paid sick leave, health insurance, and childcare, which is especially important now that schools are shuttered. They also deserve hazard pay. Their vulnerability is generating a wave of worker activism at businesses such as Instacart, Amazon, Walmart, and Whole Foods. Mass-transit workers are organizing work stoppages. Trump’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has the legal authority to require private employers provide essential workers with protective gear. Don’t hold your breath.

The Unpaid: They’re an even larger group than the unemployed – whose ranks could soon reach 25%, the same as in the Great Depression. Some of the unpaid are furloughed or have used up their paid leave. So far in this crisis, 43% of adults report they or someone in their household has lost jobs or pay, according to the Pew Research Center. An estimated 9.2 million have lost their employer-provided health insurance. Many of these jobs had been in personal services that can’t be done remotely, such as retail, restaurant, and hospitality work. But as consumers rein in spending, layoffs are spreading to news organizations, tech companies, and consumer-goods manufacturers. The unpaid most need cash to feed their families and pay the rent. Fewer than half say they have enough emergency funds to cover three months of expenses, according to a survey conducted this month by Pew. So far, government has failed them, too. Checks mailed out by the Treasury last week are a pittance. Extra benefits could help, but unemployment offices are so overwhelmed with claims that they can’t get money out the door. Loans to small businesses have gone largely to big, well-connected businesses, with banks collecting fat fees. On Wednesday, Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said he is opposed to any further federal aid to state and local governments, suggesting states declare bankruptcy instead. Which means even less money for unemployment insurance, Medicaid, and everything else the unpaid need. The resulting desperation is fueling demands to “reopen the economy” long before it’s safe. If it comes down to a choice between risking one’s health and putting food on the table, many will take the latter.

The Forgotten: This group includes everyone for whom social distancing is nearly impossible because they’re packed tightly into places most Americans don’t see: prisons, jails for undocumented immigrants, camps for migrant farmworkers, Native American reservations, homeless shelters, and nursing homes. While much of New York City is sheltering at home, for example, more than 17,000 men and women, many already in poor health, are sleeping in roughly 100 shelters for single adults. All such places are becoming hotspots for the virus. These people need safe spaces with proper medical care, adequate social distancing, testing for the virus and isolation of those who have contracted it. Few are getting any of this. Not surprisingly, the Essentials, the Unpaid, and the Forgotten are disproportionately poor, black, and Latino and they are disproportionately becoming infected. An Associated Press breakdown of available state and local data showed close to 33% of those who have died from Covid-19 are African American, despite representing only 14% of the total population in areas surveyed. The Navajo Nation already has lost more people to coronavirus than have 13 states. Four of the 10 largest-known sources of infection in the United States have been correctional facilities. These three groups aren’t getting what they need to survive this crisis because they don’t have lobbyists and political action committees to do their bidding in Washington or state capitals.

The Remotes among us should be concerned, and not just because of the unfairness of the Covid-19 class divide. If the Essentials aren’t sufficiently protected, the Unpaid are forced back to work earlier than is safe, and if the Forgotten remain forgotten, no one is secure. Covid-19 will continue to spread sickness and death for months, if not years to come.

This Tuesday, April 28 at 11 a.m. Pacific Time/2 p.m. Eastern Time, I’ll be having a live discussion with Stacey Abrams about the future of the Democratic Party and voting rights in the age of coronavirus. You can tune in here.

Stay Safe, Robert Reich, Inequality Media P.S.

D. Posnett: Note for D. Trump and L. Zeldin: best to consider all of these 4 groups when attempting to rebuild the economy. Just one sick group with rampant COVID-19 will bring us all down. Viruses don’t really care about who you are. Celebrity or a jailbird, homeless or a billionaire, it’s all the same to them.

Jobs? Where are they?

David Posnett — Wed, 02 May 2018 18:08:43 +0000

From: John Tepper Marlin, Ph.D., President, Boissevain Books LLC, Principal, CityEconomist
WHERE ARE THOSE GREAT NEW JOBS FOR LONG ISLAND THAT TRUMP AND ZELDIN PROMISED

These figures were released this morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They are for Nassau and Suffolk Counties. March 2018 compared with March 2017 (the numbers are not seasonally adjusted, so you have to use year-over-year monthly comparisons).

Unemployment	4.2%	4.6%	Up .4 of a percentage point
Payroll Jobs	1,482,557	1,464,134	Down 18,423

YOU CAN BE SURE IF THE NUMBERS WERE GOOD, ZELDIN WOULD BE TRUMPETING THEM. BUT THEY ARE NOT GOOD.

NEWSDAY:

Long Island’s unemployment rate rose to 5.1 percent in February, from 4.8 percent in February 2017, state data released Tuesday show. It was the fifth consecutive year-over-year increase since October.

The rate rose in 10 months of 2017 and has been steadily moving away from what is considered full employment, which is 4 percent or below.

The number of employed residents fell by 9,500 last month, compared with a year earlier, to 1.39 million, the lowest for the month since 2015. The number of unemployed Long Islanders rose by 3,300 to 74,300, the Labor Department said. That was the highest for the month since 2015.

Southampton has the worst jobless rates for the entire island!

Trickle down economics = voodoo economics = fool me once, fool me twice…

Report: BCRA would mean more than 900K healthcare jobs lost

David Posnett — Mon, 10 Jul 2017 21:49:37 +0000

Posted on HealthDive

Les Masterson

July 7, 2017

Dive Brief:

The Senate’s Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA) would result in 1.45 million fewer jobs by 2026, according to a new report by The Commonwealth Fund. Healthcare would take a hard hit with 919,000 fewer jobs.
The Commonwealth Fund predicted an additional 753,000 jobs in 2018, but employment numbers would drop sharply after that. It said every state except Hawaii would have fewer jobs and a weaker economy. States that expanded Medicaid would feel the most pain.
The report came out on the same day that the Bureau of Labor Statisticssaid 37,000 healthcare jobs were added in June, up from 20,600 added in May .

Dive Insight:

The Commonwealth Fund said that job losses and lower economic growth would begin in 2020 and deepen in the following years as more people lose health insurance coverage, if the Senate bill were to become law.

The House’s American Health Care Act (AHCA) would cut a similar number of insured Americans, but the BCRA would harm the economy more, according to the report. The Commonwealth Fund estimates the AHCA would result in nearly 1 million lost jobs.

New York, California and Pennsylvania would lose more than 100,000 jobs each. “Twenty-two million Americans will become uninsured under the Better Care Reconciliation Act, and now this research makes it clear that people will also be at risk of losing their jobs and that states’ economies will suffer,” said Sara Collins, vice president for healthcare coverage and access at The Commonwealth Fund.

One reason for the economic problems resulting from the BCRA is the bill’s Medicaid cuts, which would deepen further after 2026. Also, the BCRA’s tax provisions would result in much lower assistance, especially for older Americans, which will result in people not being able to afford high deductibles and result in fewer people enrolling in health plans. Third, the BCRA would reduce the threshold of the medical care deduction from 10% to 7.5%.

Cuts to healthcare jobs would especially harm the economy. Healthcare has been a major driver of job growth in recent years. The Commonwealth Fund predicts healthcare would lose 30,000 jobs in 2018 under the BCRA. Ultimately, 919,000 healthcare jobs would disappear, which is about 1 of every 22 health jobs.

“While our analysis shows other employment sectors grow initially, by 2026 more than half a million jobs are lost in other sectors of the economy, too,” according to The Commonwealth Fund.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the June jobs report Friday, which said there were 37,000 healthcare jobs added in June, with 26,000 in ambulatory care services and 11,700 at hospitals. So far this year, healthcare job growth has slowed. Healthcare has added 24,000 more jobs on average per month so far in 2017 after adding 32,000 on average per month in 2016.

Healthcare has seen some high-profile layoffs in 2017. For instance, NYC Health + Hospitals cut 476 management positions to save $60 million in the next fiscal year after losing $776 million for the first half of 2017 and Brigham and Women’s Hospital offered voluntary buyouts in April to 1,600 workers.

Also, Memorial Hermann, Summa Health and Hallmark Health all recently announced staffing cuts, which they blamed on declining reimbursements, lower admissions and shrinking operating incomes.

The 37,000 new healthcare jobs in June is positive, but the question is whether that trend remain or will growth slip back down to this year’s average.

The Commonwealth Fund’s report will surely get the attention of economics — and senators. Senate leaders are already trying to figure out ways to tweak the BCRA to get enough conservative and moderate support to pass the legislation. Republicans only have a two-vote majority in the Senate and the current bill doesn’t have enough support for passage.

Uncertainty about what bill — if any — will pass is likely a major factor is slowed healthcare job growth. This latest report about jobs losses if the BCRA becomes law will only deepen the opposition against the bill.

Trump’s Budget Could Create Chaos in the States

David Posnett — Fri, 16 Jun 2017 14:19:29 +0000

President Trump’s proposed 2018 budget would result in deep cuts to federal payments to states. Federal funds currently account for nearly a third of state expenditures, so if enacted, Trump’s budget would kick huge decisions to statehouses: raise taxes, reduce benefits, or eliminate services.

Start with state government’s largest expenditure, Medicaid (nearly 30 percent). The Trump budget, combined with proposals in the House-passed American Health Care Act (AHCA), could cut the federal contribution to Medicaid more than $1 trillion over the next decade.

The AHCA would gradually eliminate the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion and change the federal match rate to a per-capita cap, which would grow at a slower rate than current Medicaid spending. In total, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the AHCA changes would reduce federal Medicaid spending $834 billion over 10 years. The president’s budget includes another $600 billion in cuts, which appear to be in addition to the AHCA’s cuts. However, in line with the rest of this “black box” budget, even the White House doesn’t know for sure (or won’t say). But if they are combined, they would cut federal Medicaid funding nearly in half by 2026.

In its typical understated way, the CBO describes what comes next. Its March score of the AHCA (which looked a lot like the new CBO score), said, “How individual states would ultimately respond [to Medicaid cuts] is highly uncertain.”

That’s because Trump and the House Republicans are offering states a trade-off that would fundamentally change the way the half-century old program works. Under the current funding mechanism, the federal government pays a percentage of program costs no matter how fast they grow. The Trump-House GOP replacement would cap federal contributions based on each state’s number of enrollees (per-capita cap), or offer funds in a block grant. States would get far more control over how they run the program—but with far less money to do so.

So would states raise taxes to fill the funding gap or drop people from health care? Connecticut and New Jersey established task forces to prepare responses to Medicaid cuts. But Texas Gov. Gregg Abbot cheered Obamacare’s “spiraling to a hasty death.” Regardless, even states that want to maintain current coverage levels would need billions in new dollars every year. That’s a huge lift for states and why CBO estimated 14 million would lose Medicaid if AHCA became law.

Then there’s the rest of Trump’s budget. Along with some budget tricks, the administration finds balance by reducing non-defense discretionary spending 2 percent each year—totaling $1.4 trillion over 10 years.

Specifically, it proposes double-digit percentage cuts to the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and Transportation, all of which send money to states. Some examples of program cuts over the 10-year period:

$200 billion cut from the SNAP (i.e., food stamps); currently completely federally funded, the budget also proposes requiring states to chip in a quarter of funds.
$100 billion cut from the Highway Trust Fund, which sends money to states for highway and mass transit projects.
$20 billion from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, a joint federal-state funded program that provides welfare cash.

The National Association of State Budget Officers has a good roundup of the numerous other state administered programs cut or eliminated in the budget, including EPA grants, community development block grants, rental assistance programs, low income home energy assistance programs, and more. And what about the administration’s new social program, paid parental leave? The budget forces states to raise their unemployment taxes to pay for it.

Would states raise taxes to keep these programs? Does the equation change if the state and local tax deduction is repealed?

There are a lot of unknowns, but we know the administration and Congress are both interested in cutting federal payments to states, and that states don’t have enough money to replace those funds. As with health care, the federal budget cuts would probably reduce services and beneficiaries. But because they’re state programs, what each state does is highly uncertain.

Posts and Comments are solely the opinion of the author and not that of the Tax Policy Center, Urban Institute, or Brookings Institution.

I Do Not Support a Livable Wage!

David Posnett — Thu, 08 Jun 2017 11:09:30 +0000

This is a quote from Karen Handel (running for congress against Jon Ossoff). The quote has gone viral on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HuffPost/status/872279182545494017

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/karen-handel-i-dont-support-livable-wage

Nice review of the context by George Lakoff on this blog post.

Trump’s Budget from Hell

David Posnett — Tue, 23 May 2017 16:20:49 +0000

This is a budget from hell. Increases for defense and the wall that will ultimately raise the total expenditures, despite the ill-advised cuts. So, Mr. Zeldin, are you going to say something now, or tow the party line?

Trump wants to cut billions from the departments that regulate drugs, stop infections, and research cancer
Business Insider, By Rebecca Robbins, May 22, 2017

U.S. President Donald Trump listens to a question during a joint news conference with Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos (not pictured) at the White House in Washington, U.S. Kevin Lamarque/Reuters The Trump administration’s proposed budget for 2018 would make sweeping cuts to Medicaid as well as to the agencies and programs that propel the nation’s engines of science and biomedical research. The administration released a “skinny budget” in March that included sharp proposed cuts to Read the full story

Long-time Iowa farm cartoonist fired after creating this cartoon

David Posnett — Sat, 29 Apr 2017 18:08:49 +0000

Published in Orazz.con

Rick Friday has been giving farmers a voice and a laugh every Friday for two decades through his cartoons in Farm News.

Now the long-time Iowa farm cartoonist tells KCCI that he has been fired.

Friday announced Sunday that his job was over after 21 years in a Facebook post that has since gone viral.

FACEBOOK POST:

“Again, I fall hard in the best interest of large corporations. I am no longer the Editorial Cartoonist for Farm News due to the attached cartoon which was published yesterday. Apparently a large company affiliated with one of the corporations mentioned in the cartoon was insulted and cancelled their advertisement with the paper, thus, resulting in the reprimand of my editor and cancellation of its Friday cartoons after 21 years of service and over 1,090 published cartoons to over 24,000 households per week in 33 counties of Iowa.

“I did my research and only submitted the facts in my cartoon.

“That’s okay, hopefully my children and my grandchildren will see that this last cartoon published by Farm News out of Fort Dodge, Iowa, will shine light on how fragile our rights to free speech and free press really are in the county.”

THE CARTOON:

The cartoon features two farmers talking about farming profits. (view cartoon)

The first says, “I wish there was more profit in farming.”

The second farm answers, “There is. In year 2015 the CEOs of Monsanto, DuPont Pioneer and John Deere combined made more money than 2,129 Iowa farmers.

Friday received an email from his editor at Farm New cutting off their relationship a day after the cartoon was published.

Friday’s editor said a seed dealer pulled their advertisements with Farm News as a result of the cartoon, and others working at the paper disagreed with the jokes made about the agriculture corporations.

“When it comes to altering someone’s opinion or someone’s voice for the purpose of wealth, I have a problem with that,” said Friday. “It’s our constitutional right to free speech and our constitutional right to free press.”

The YUGE job losses Trump is ignoring: retail workers

David Posnett — Tue, 25 Apr 2017 20:28:30 +0000

Originally posted in Daily Kos

By Sher Watts Spooner

Sunday Apr 23, 2017 · 10:20 AM EDT

Malls across the U.S., like this mall in Milford, Connecticut, are growing emptier and emptier. Which is bad news for those employed by the mall’s stores.

This is not a good time to have a job in the retail industry.

If you’ve been to a shopping mall recently, you may have noticed that many storefronts are empty. Stores that are still open aren’t crowded, and there are plenty of spaces in the parking lot.

About one in every 10 American workers works in the retail industry, and one out of every three retail employees works part time. A retail job is the first job experience for about one-third of Americans, so cutbacks block entry into the job market. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 15.9 million people worked in the U.S. retail industry in January 2017, but that number has been shrinking. Since October 2016, 89,000 retail workers have lost their jobs. The most recent BLS jobs report in early April showed that 30,000 retail workers lost jobs in March—about equal to the number of retail jobs lost in February. The March decrease alone was enough to lower the job growth numbers to just 98,000. The two-month job loss was the worst retail job loss since the Great Recession in 2009.

Donald Trump loves to whine about jobs lost in the disappearing coal industry and in manufacturing. He brags that he will bring back coal and factory jobs—a promise he’s unlikely to keep, even as his executive orders weaken industry regulations. But lost retail jobs hit America much harder, and he’s silent about those. Those 89,000 people who lost retail jobs are more than the entirety—53,000—of those employed in the coal industry. While the coal, manufacturing, and retail industries have all suffered losses because of globalization and technological advances, the job losses aren’t always equal. Department stores have lost 18 times more workers than coal mining since 2001. Linda McMahon, the former World Wresting Entertainment CEO who now heads the Small Business Administration, is more concerned about trashing regulations than measuring the impact of retail job loss.

When retail workers lose their jobs, that affects a lot more than the workers—it affects their families and their communities. The cascading downward spiral means fewer dollars in families’ pockets, fewer dollars spent at other stores, fewer stores to spend money at, and fewer dollars to buy food and to pay mortgages and rent. An estimated two-thirds of the U.S. gross domestic product comes from retail consumption. So store closings and openings can indicate how well the U.S. economy is doing overall.

Overall, BLS numbers show that nearly half of all retail workers are female, and nearly 75 percent of the work force in clothing stores is female. Some 12 percent of all retail employees are African American, six percent are Asian American, and 17 percent are Latino. Those percentages are much higher than percentages in the same demographic groups holding jobs in the coal industry and in manufacturing, which is much more white and male.

But those women and minorities aren’t being interviewed by the news media as the people the economy left behind.

A recent story in The Atlantic laid out three possible reasons why retail job losses remain hidden under the political and media radar: geography, demographics, and nostalgia.

How has the retail bloodletting been so much quieter than the decline in mining and manufacturing? There are several plausible explanations. First, mining and manufacturing jobs are geographically concentrated. Sixty percent of coal-mining jobs are in just four states: West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming. Retail is spread more evenly across the country, so there are “mining towns,” which politicians can visit and photographers can capture and where the pain runs especially deep, in a way there are not “mall towns.” Second, as SlateChief Political Correspondent Jamelle Bouie tweeted, the demographics of a job can determine its political salience. Coal mining is still 95 percent white and 95 percent male. Department store workers are 40 percent minority and just 40 percent male. The emphasis on work that is white, male, and burly may represent an implicit bias against the working class of the modern service economy, which is more diverse and female. Third, mining and manufacturing jobs feed into a national nostalgia for the mid-century economy, with its unionized workforce, economic growth, and high pay for men without much education.

A story from Slate by that same Jamelle Bouie makes the same argument:

In terms of attention, [coal miners] punch far above their weight class. They constitute a small portion of the American workforce, and yet, elite journalists devote countless words to their lives and communities, while politicians use them and their priorities as a platform for performing authenticity. For those in and around politics, one’s connection to “real America” is often judged by one’s proximity to these workers and their concerns. Which raises a question: Why them and not those retail workers who face an equally (if not more) precarious future? …

Retail work in malls and shopping centers and department stores is largely work done by women. Of the nearly 6 million people who work in those fields in stores like Sears, Michaels, Target, J.C. Penney, and Payless, close to 60 percent are women. … A substantial portion of these workers—roughly 40 percent across the different kinds of retail—are black, Latino, or Asian American. …

Work is gendered and it is racialized. What work matters is often tied to who performs it. It is no accident that those professions dominated by white men tend to bring the most prestige, respect, and pay, while those dominated by women—and especially women of color—are often ignored, disdained, and undercompensated.

Many of us likely had a retail job at some point in our lives. Maybe we worked at a corner mom-and-pop shop or worked weekend and evening shifts at a store in a nearby mall. My own experience was peddling popcorn behind the candy counter at a mall multiplex. The pay was barely above minimum wage, but at least I got to see movies for free.

Sears Roebuck and Co. used to be the biggest name in retail. It advertised itself as the store “where America shops.” It once had a booming catalog business that sold mail-order house kits and was where much of America bought appliances and tools. Now, with competition from big-box stores (also not doing well) and online shopping, Sears is closing stores and might be on the verge of collapse: The company lost $2 billion in 2016, and sales dropped 10.3 percent in the fourth quarter, when many stores finally sell enough to be in the black. According to an NPR story:

Despite its merger with Kmart in 2005, Sears has consistently lost millions of dollars each quarter.

The retailer has closed hundreds of stores, slashed jobs and sold off key assets like the Lands’ End clothing line and its legendary Craftsman brand — although both brands continue to be sold at Sears. Independent retail analyst Sucharita Mulpuru says these changes haven’t worked.

“There are just so many onerous forces relating to competition,” she says. “I think that no matter what they do, they are fighting a losing battle.”

And what of Sears workers? The generous employee discount program is gone, replaced with a “point system.” Some 250 employees at Sears’ corporate offices were laid off last year, and 150 openings went unfilled. If you worked in sales and your store closed, you’re out of luck.

Of course, Sears isn’t alone. In a trend a story in Business Insider dubs the “retail apocalypse,” more than 3,500 stores are expected to close in the next few months of 2017. It’s being described as “one of the biggest waves of retail closures in decades.”

This might have been avoided if malls weren’t overbuilt to begin with. The Business Insider story reports that the United States “has 23.5 square feet of retail space per person, compared with 16.4 square feet in Canada and 11.1 square feet in Australia, the next two countries with the most retail space per capita.” When a major anchor store in a mall closes, smaller stores are soon to follow. “Nearly a third of shopping malls are at risk of dying off as a result of store closures,” the story added. What do those workers do then?

Retail workers aren’t highly paid. Some, especially those in higher-end clothing stores, are paid on commission. They don’t have pensions or 401(k) plans, and they don’t earn enough to save for retirement. As the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, the annual median salary for a retail employee was $22,040 in 2015, and the annual median hourly wage was $10.60.

And they’re not getting very many raises, either. As an AP story puts it: “Average hourly earnings for retail employees, including managers, has inched up just 1.1 percent over the past year, compared with a 2.7 percent average increase for all U.S. workers.”

There are unions that represent retail workers, but they don’t have much power—or membership. The Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union is a semi-autonomous subsidiary of the United Food and Commercial Workers union. But union membership for retail workers has dropped from a high of 15 percent of all retail workers in the 1970s to less than five percent today—one of the lowest rates of unionization in the entire economy.

The bottoming out of the retail market and retail jobs isn’t surprising to anyone who orders merchandise online. E-commerce has grown faster than delivery of packages by drones. According to a story in The New York Times:

Between 2010 and 2014, e-commerce grew by an average of $30 billion annually. Over the past three years, average annual growth has increased to $40 billion. …

This transformation is hollowing out suburban shopping malls, bankrupting longtime brands, and leading to staggering job losses. …

The job losses in retail could have unexpected social and political consequences, as huge numbers of low-wage retail employees become economically unhinged, just as manufacturing workers did in recent decades.

Even Black Friday, the retail sales extravaganza on the day and weekend after Thanksgiving when stories traditionally showed profits, has seen decreases. Figures for 2016 showed that 99 million people shopped in brick-and-mortar stores, 3 million fewer than in 2015. Online shopping, on the other hand, went up, even as people didn’t wait for Cyber Monday: 108 million people shopped online over the Thanksgiving weekend, about 5 million more than the previous year.

As retail workers in brick-and-mortar stores have lost jobs, hiring has picked up in online warehouses for companies like Amazon. But there are too few of those jobs to make up the difference, and many of those jobs are quickly getting automated.

“Until now, retail workers—unlike the car-making and coal-mining industries—have made little political splash,” said a story on Axios Media. “Look for that to change.”