Sears Store Closings In High Unemployment Areas

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Dec 30, 9:46AM EST · Published Dec 30, 5:53AM EST

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Add to the problems of unemployment that it will be harder for the jobless to shop at Sears and KMart. A list of 79 locations that will be shuttered by Sears Holdings (NASDAQ: SHLD) was released yesterday. The total number will eventually reach 100 to 120. It is wonder that Sears Holdings does not know, or will not disclose, the list of all locations set to be eliminated.

The news may be good for the unemployed because experts have argued that the quality of Sears and KMart stores has fallen sharply. But, the two retailers do sell inexpensive goods and their absences hardly helps people who live on unemployment insurance.

While to is hard to blame Sears for its decision to leave high unemployment areas, it is a another signal that some portions of the US will lose more goods and services when they are regions with intransigent joblessness.

Seven stores will be closed in Florida, which had an unemployment rate of 10% in November. Five will be closed in Michigan where unemployment was 9.8%. Mississippi has an unemployment rate of 10.5%. Five stores will be closed in that state.

No Sears Holdings stores will be closed in low-unemployment level Connecticut. And none in New York or Texas, either. Sears and KMart can hold the line in places where a higher percentage of people have jobs.

Another by-product of the closings is that jobs will be lost in areas where they are harder to find.

The Sears Holdings list shows, once again, that the regions of the nation where the economy is still in a flat spin face more challenges than most others when services and job creation are counted.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.