[Puffer Fish]

I have been trying to tell people that dying malls are symptom of decline in the U.S. economy. That individual people in the U.S. have less money to spend and that is what has driven the decline.

In this thread I will show the numbers and do some basic calculations to prove it.
When trying to see the change in the economy over time, I think it is very important to adjust for population numbers and inflation.

The first column shows the year. The second column shows the total amount of retail sales that year in U.S. malls (in billions). The third column shows the U.S. population that year (in millions). Dividing the second column by the third column gives the fourth column, the amount of mall retail sales per capita. The fifth column adjusts for inflation, to make it easier to see if sales actually increased or decreased between these time periods.

1990 - 706.38 bil - 250.1 mil - 2824 (equal to 3241 in 1994)
1994 - 851.28 bil - 263.4 mil - 3231 (equal to 3517 in 1997)
1997 - 980.03 bil - 272.9 mil - 3591 (equal to 5633 in 2005)
2005 - 1530.44 bil - 295.5 mil - 5179 (equal to 7635 in 2022)
2022 - 819 bil - 333.3 mil - 2457

sources:
Total retail sales of U.S. shopping malls | Statista
The State of the American Mall 2023 (coresight.com)

It seems that between 1990 and 1994, per capita sales decreased a little bit, but then increased a little by 1997.
Between 1997 and 2005, per capita sales decreased by 8%.
We can see a gigantic drop between 2005 and 2022. Per capita sales in 2022 were not even one third of what they were in 2005.

Amazon's total sales in 2022 were $513.98 billion.
Just to put that into perspective, if per capita mall spending in 2005 had remained the same, adjusting for inflation it would have been $2544.9 billion in 2022, nearly FIVE times what Amazon's total sales were.

I don't have to point out that people have blamed Amazon for all sorts of other brick-and-mortar retail decline in America. But this is only looking at malls.
It's obvious from looking at the numbers that Amazon cannot be to blame for the decline of American malls.

(Amazon accounted for 40% of internet retail sales in 2022)


You can see in this graph that between the start of 2008 and the start of 2010, vacancy rates in malls soared. They reached a peak in the third quarter of 2011. Vacancy rates went from around 5% in 2001 to nearly 9% in late 2009.
Is the American shopping mall dead? - Impact Lab


$2824 in 1990 would be the equivalent of $6,232 in 2022. It's almost amazing to think the average American in 1990 was spending what is now like $6,232 in malls every year.