Employment trends in electronic shopping

As Americans follow the recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to protect themselves and others from the spread of COVID-19, we have changed many of our daily activities. That includes shopping. Many people are shopping online instead of visiting their favorite retail establishments.

Employment in electronic shopping and mail-order houses was about 401,000 at the end of third quarter 2019. That was nearly double the employment level in 2001. The number of establishments in the industry has grown even more. There were 32,553 establishments in the industry in third quarter 2019, nearly 4 times as many as in 2001. Average wages in the industry were $1,538 per week in third quarter 2019. That compares with an average weekly wage of $1,093 for all workers in the United States.

Washington state had the highest concentration of employment in electronic shopping and mail-order houses. In September 2019, the industry’s employment share in Washington was more than 6 times higher than the national share of employment in the industry. Utah, New Hampshire, Arizona, and Wisconsin also were among the states with employment shares above the national average.

Location quotients are the ratio of an industry’s employment share in an area to its national share. For example, an industry with 6 percent of state employment and 2 percent of national employment would have a location quotient in that state of 6/2 = 3. A location quotient greater than 1 means the industry has a higher share of area employment than the national average.

These data are from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. You can get more industry employment data for the nation, states, counties, and metropolitan areas with the data viewer tool.