Some Social & Economic Trends: Online Shopping, Changing Composition Of U.S. Families, Worker Happiness, Wives As Breadwinners And Youth Death Rates

See Online Shopping Is Getting Old: E-commerce’s share of retail sales shot higher when the pandemic hit, and is still elevated by Justin Lahart of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"Americans are shopping online like never before. But with the fight for online sales getting ever more intense, retailers’ easy dot-com pickings are long gone.

The Commerce Department on Thursday reported that e-commerce sales rose a seasonally adjusted 3% in the first quarter from the fourth quarter, putting them 8% above their year-earlier level. In contrast, retail sales excluding e-commerce sales were up just 2.9%—not by enough to keep up with inflation. With the latest gain, e-commerce sales accounted for 15.1% of retail sales which, other than the second quarter of 2020 when pandemic lockdowns stuck people in their homes, was the biggest share ever."

See Same-Sex Couples Accounted for 1% of Households in 2020, Census Shows by Paul Overberg and Anthony DeBarros of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"Opposite-sex married couples made up 46% and opposite-sex unmarried partners made up 7%. About 28% of households were occupied by someone living alone, up from about 27% in 2010. Most of the remaining 19% lived with relatives in a variety of household types. The share of opposite-sex married couples dropped 2 percentage points from 2010, while other types grew slightly."

See Workers Are Happier Than They’ve Been in Decades: Labor shortages and shifting expectations lead to improvement for millions, survey shows by Lauren Weber of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"Job satisfaction hit a 36-year high in 2022, reflecting two effects of the tight pandemic labor market: The quality of jobs improved as wages and work flexibility increased, and workers moved into positions that were a better fit.

Last year, 62.3% of U.S. workers said they were satisfied with their jobs, according to new data from the Conference Board, up from 60.2% in 2021 and 56.8% in 2020. The business-research organization polled workers on 26 aspects of work, and found that people were most content with their commutes, their co-workers, the physical environment of their workplace and job security."

"“Once unemployment goes up, once we hit a recession, there will be fewer people changing jobs they were unhappy with,” Mr. Eren said [Selcuk Eren, a senior economist at the Conference Board]. The satisfaction measure hit its lowest point—42.6%—in 2010, in the aftermath of the 2007-09 recession. The Conference Board began surveying workers on satisfaction in 1987."

See More Wives Now Outearn Their Husbands. They Also Stay Together Longer: The share of marriages with women breadwinners tripled over the last 50 years by Julia Carpenter of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"Couples married in the late 1960s and 1970s were 70% more likely to divorce when wives earned the same or slightly more than their husbands compared with couples where the husband earned more"

"For couples married in the 1990s, however, the divorce rate for those with female breadwinners had fallen to 4% higher than male breadwinners."

"The share of women outearning their husbands has tripled over the last 50 years, from 5% to 16% of all opposite-sex marriages"

See Young Americans Are Dying at Alarming Rates, Reversing Years of Progress: Car accidents, homicides, suicides and drug overdoses have pushed up death rates for children and teens in the U.S. by Janet Adamy of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"Between 2019 and 2020, the overall mortality rate for ages 1 to 19 rose by 10.7%, and increased by an additional 8.3% the following year"

"That’s the highest increase for two consecutive years in the half-century that the government has publicly tracked such figures"

"Other developed countries including the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada and Norway also saw a rise in some death counts among young people during that time, though the upticks were often concentrated in narrow age groups or one gender"

"Physicians and public-health researchers say that school closures, canceled sports and youth activities and limitations on in-person socializing all worsened a burgeoning mental-health epidemic among young people in the U.S."

"In 2020, life expectancy fell 1.8 years, the largest decline since at least World War II, not just because of Covid but also because of increased mortality from unintentional injuries, including drug overdoses, as well as homicides."

 

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