America’s economic landscape is rapidly changing. In recent years, hundreds of thousands of stores were permanently shut down, and as we enter a new economic downturn, many more are likely to close doors for good. Conditions for business owners are getting increasingly difficult as the compounding effects of inflation, supply chain challenges, and slower consumer spending continues to compromise their sales and profits month after month. New data suggests that pessimism in the retail sector is growing all across the board, and even big companies are struggling to stay afloat right now. Many of the most iconic American retailers have closed thousands of stores and filed for bankruptcy as they failed to keep up with their competitors. The rise of online retailers made several brick-and-mortar stores seem redundant. Even though companies tend to think that they have something unique to offer their customers, the reality is that not enough of them actually do. Some, in fact, lose touch with what shoppers truly want and need for such a long time that when they realize there’s no turning back or quick fix, they have no choice but to go out of business. The disappearance of so many big stores is a major signal of economic weakness. The phenomenon known as the retail apocalypse is nothing more than a reflection of a shrinking middle class that’s been too overburdened with debt and soaring living expenses. Middle-income earners have also lost so much purchasing power that they're left with too little money to spend on other goods after paying their bills at the end of each month. More and more, middle-class Americans are turning to discount stores because they can't afford to shop at brand-name stores anymore. The shift in consumer habits towards online shopping has also been the impending doom for brick-and-mortar stores. Not only that, e-commerce is much more competitive in terms of price and promotions, and you can purchase whatever you want with only a click. Hundreds of thousands of businesses have been closed in the past five years, and according to UBS data, 80,000 more might be gone by 2026. The shutdown of each of these locations means that dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of jobs are going to be lost at a time, too. America's economic landscape is looking gloomier and emptier, and the death of big business shows us that something is terminally broken in our system. In this video, we listed a series of stores that are suffering from a lack of customers, a lack of money, a lack of viable prospects, or a combination of all of those issues. Many of them have already shuttered dozens or even hundreds of locations all across the nation, or are in the process of closing down in 2022. Soon, they may disappear from our commercial scene altogether, and we might never get the chance to shop at these stores ever again.
