E-commerce sales continue to stay above their pre-pandemic trend:
The growth rate isn't stronger than it was before COVID. It's just above trend and growing at the trend rate. But it shows no signs of slowing down.
9 thoughts on “E-commerce continues to grow vigorously”
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While you might say that the last 2 years of growth are at the same rate as prior to the pandemic, if you take two points in time, one at now and one at 2021, that looks like a permanent bump. That might also mean that brick and mortar stores had an associated permanent cut.
That area between the long-term expected slope and the actual slope would then be similar to lost potential and gained potential. I know I'd rather be on the gained potential side.
Ecommerce will slow down when the US Postal Service is gone and all those e-purchases have to be delivered by one of the pricier private services.
In larger metro areas, Amazon has its own delivery vehicles. This won’t help rural areas and small towns, but they voted for the entire destruction of the federal government alongside rigging most state governments against the needs of their large urban areas’ economies - not many states build adequate roads, transit, schools, etc in urban areas to keep urban economies running strong* - so fuck rural areas and small towns.
*Looking at you “centrist” Gov Hogan cancelling a subway project in Baltimore as well as you “moderate” Gov Christie cancelling a tunnel project in northern New Jersey, and both redistributing the funds to rural road projects. Most states ignore or actively undermine their largest cities all the time, despite urbanized areas generating most of their states’ economic output.
Your take that this will hurt rural areas relative to urban assumes that Amazon would be willing to announce that they charge different shipping rates for rural and urban areas. In a world in which MAGA idiots love an auto-da-fé every time they feel like they've slighted, I doubt that this assumption holds.
Deliveries from online (local) purchases at Home Depot are not delivered by USPS; they're done by local independent contractors. USPS is just one of several last-mile companies that Temu and Shein use. Amazon has vertical integration of their logistics.
If the USPS went away, what would go up in prices are letters, political and marketing mailers, postcards and greeting cards.
A related chart would be nice - Amazon's share of e-commerce sales. When I asked Google, it replied "Amazon had a 37.6% share of e-commerce sales in the United States in 2023, and is projected to surpass 40% by 2024." A chart showing how that percentage has changed in the past 20 years.
There are more than a few things I have to buy online that I used to buy at the drug store because the CBS/Walgreens acquisitions and slimming down mean they just don't stock it when I need it.
I think the only thing I've been buying there lately has been hair bleach (my spouse likes brightly colored hair, and only a few locations still stock loose bleach packets) and bandaids.
Everything else from hair ties to hand lotion, color catchers etc, I've had to get online (from major brands!) because I can't depend upon the stores to have them when I need more. And then I always get just slightly more so I get free shipping.
A lot of people changed their habits during the pandemic, and many of those habits didn't change back. Same thing happened with remote work.
I'm actually surprised that e-commerce is only 16%. Maybe grocery stores and gas stations are big percentages.