Two strangely related pieces of data came out this week. The first showed the near-total collapse of traditional retail in the post-pandemic United States. Covid accelerated the trend towards e-commerce and away from department stores and big-box retail. This move is productivity-enhancing, especially for people who hate shopping, but is terrible for employment, particular female employment, and for commercial real estate values.  Looking at the data – retail sales as a per cent of total sales by sales type over a 20-year period for the US, where the trend happened first – you see big-box retailers basically flat as a…

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