This just in:
"U.S.-headquartered companies put 58,877 jobs on the chopping block last month, up 43 percent from just more than 41,000 in August and the third highest monthly total this year"
"One of the things you start to see as you get near the end of a period of expansion, but before it really turns, is you start to see major layoffs occurring, big mega-layoffs like we're seeing now."
ZH: Oct. 1, 2015
"Econ 101" Strikes Again. Walmart Lays Off Overhead
"when low prices become something of a religion, passing on rising labor costs to consumers simply isn't an option"
I had no idea.
Econ/Reality 201: Aggregate wages = Revenue
When an extremely large scale business paying nominal wages destroys millions of small businesses and hence its own customer base, don't be surprised to eventually go out of business. Because when your customer base consists of jobless "consumers" ever-more dependent upon foodstamps which are continually being cut by Congress, that can affect "revenue".
There's only one thing left to cut in corporate America: Profits.
Foodstamps (billions, right scale) with corporate profits baselined to GDP (left scale):
Walmart versus Amazon.
Walmart makes more profit in one quarter than Amazon has made since 1994 combined. And yet Amazon's stock valuation just passed Walmart's, not to mention relative stock performance.
Walmart can't compete with a company that makes no profit and has 10% of the employee base:
Most recent quarter:
