A big bloodletting is coming to the franchise department store Macy’s, with a reported 2,350 employees being laid off nationwide, and the San Leandro’s Macy’s at the Bayfair Center will be one of five store casualties.

We tend to think of retail store closures in malls as a San Francisco “doom loop” problem, or more specifically, a former Westfield Centre mall in San Francisco problem. But in reality, retail stores in malls are being closed across the country. And the latest mall store closure is indeed a nationwide one, though with effects here in the Bay Area, as the Chronicle reports that the San Leandro Macy’s in the Bayfair Center mall will be closing permanently.  

“At Macy’s, we continue to reposition our store fleet to better meet the needs of our customers in each of our markets,” Macy’s said in a statement to the Chronicle. “After careful consideration, we have decided to close our Macy’s Bayfair Center store.”

The Chron cites a Wall Street Journal report which notes that Macy’s is also closing stores in  Ventura County’s Simi Valley, Tallahassee, Florida, Lihue, Hawaii, and Arlington, Virginia.

But the larger issue here is the reported layoffs of 2,350 Macy’s employees across the country, which represents about 3.5% of its total workforce. (The layoffs will also affect Macy’s subsidiaries Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury.) That likely means many of the retail employees won’t get the standard “transfer to a neighboring store” opportunity, and that the job cuts will probably extend to the white-collar workforce as well.

According to Macy’s most recent quarterly earnings report for the third quarter of 2023, earnings for the quarter were $43 million. That compares to $108 million for the third quarter of the previous year.

As far as the Bayfair Center Macy’s goes, the Chronicle says that “Closing sales at the Bayfair Center Macy’s will begin this month and run for eight to 12 weeks.” That would put the store’s final closure somewhere around March or April.

Related: Retail Experts Predict Downtown and Westfield Mall Recovery Maybe In 2024 [SFist]

Image: Ultima M. via Yelp