The data in the US, “land of shopping and malls”, is staggering. In 2017, year to date, there have already been more bankruptcies in this sector compared to the data from all of 2016. Employment data in steadily declining, department stores alone reduced more than 100,000 jobs in six months (!) and they now employ one-third the number of employees they had in 2001. For a comparison, that is 18 times the loss of jobs in the coal mining industry over the same period.