Coronavirus has shifted retail work into warehouses at an even faster pace, increasing pressure on companies and workers to keep up.
With department stores and malls shuttered, online retailers have seen a huge jump in orders.
“Any given day, I get two different spectrums of the retail industry. Some are trying to hire like crazy and others don’t know how to pay the bills. Brick and mortar is much the latter,” said Rachel Michelin, president and CEO of the California Retailers Association.
In California, the world’s fifth-largest economy, one in four jobs had been in retail. Except for Amazon or essential warehouse grocers, most of those jobs have vanished.
READ MORE AT DISMAL SCIENCE