Idaho retail employment grew 2.5 percent between 2016 and 2018, despite a national spate of store closures and employment declines.
With many retail chains closing hundreds of stores across the U.S., headlines about a “retail apocalypse” have appeared on news sites. Last year, according to Coresight Research, 5,524 stores across the United States closed. In the first eight months of this year, 8,051 closed. This year closures could exceed the record set in 2017, when 8,139 stores were shuttered. Challenger, Gray & Christmas counts 53,248 announced retail job cuts for the first half of this year, compared with 98,563 for all of last year.
Between 2016 and 2018, employment in U.S. retail stores fell 0.2 percent, while employment at Idaho’s retail stores grew 2.5 percent, from 81,265 to 83,330. Between June 2018 and June 2019, retail store jobs in the U.S. fell 0.5 percent, while they rose 1.8 percent in Idaho, adding 1,600 jobs.
