E-commerce and local labor markets: Is the “Retail Apocalypse” near?

The rapid growth of e-commerce is widely blamed for job losses in brick-and-mortar retail. Using geographic variations in online spending, constructed from over 30 billion credit card transactions in Korea, we examine the causal effect of e-commerce on local retail employment. We find that the rise in the share of online spending from 2010 to 2015 decreased county-level retail employment by about 4.9 percent. We also find that employment shifted from offline retail to other local businesses, such as restaurants and personal services. However, the shift in employment was confined to metropolitan areas, falling far short of offsetting employment losses in non-metropolitan areas. Our finding suggests that a Retail Job Apocalypse is likely in certain local labor markets (i.e., non-metropolitan areas).