Investors are growing more worried about retail

American retailers have shed jobs on an annual basis for the first time since 2010

The latest US  jobs report laid bare some of the sobering tribulations faced by American retailers: they’ve shed jobs on an annual basis for the first time since 2010, when the sector’s employment was just starting to rebound following the Great Recession. 

The challenges are mounting as Amazon.com  continues to grab market share in a secular trend in favour of e-commerce at the same time that cyclical consumption, the engine of US  growth, may be sputtering. Big-ticket spending items like autos have seen a marked slowdown in sales during 2017. And even maintaining the current pace of spending growth could prove