Two decades of easy credit and hyper-consumption from North American households have encouraged a massive overbuild in the retail sector and commercial real estate.
In the process, retail - which includes online giants like Amazon (AMZN), eBay (EBAY), big-box chains, and smaller brick and mortar entities - became the largest North American employer accounting for 12% of Canadian, and 10% of total US employment (source: World Atlas) and 6% of US GDP. According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), retail supports one in four U.S. jobs or 42 million working Americans.
However, as US