It’s long been understood that US retail is over-stored. At about 23.5 square feet per person, the US has more retail space per capita than any country worldwide, according to a 2018 analysis by Cowen and Company. For reference, No. 2 Canada has 16.8 square feet of retail space per capita.
Consequently, US retail has undergone substantial downsizing. Last year, more than 9,300 stores shuttered, according to December 2019 data from Coresight Research, an increase from the 5,844 stores that closed the previous year. As of March 2020, roughly 630,000 stores temporarily closed to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
According to our latest estimates, US brick-and-mortar sales will decline 14.0% in 2020, equating to a loss of nearly $680 billion from 2019. As a share of overall retail, this represents 85.5%, a loss of 3.5 percentage points from last year.