As e-commerce and retail companies continue to invest technologies to replace people in warehouses, thousands of workers in some of the country's poorest towns could eventually be out of work. The other side: The scores of warehousing jobs supporting many rural American towns are also among the most vulnerable to automation. And the list goes on with small towns from Texas to Florida to Pennsylvania.Mount Vernon, Illinois, which has long been home to a Walgreens distribution center, has 9.5% of its working population in warehousing jobs.Ottawa, Kansas, also a town of about 26,000 people, has 15% of its working population in e-commerce jobs thanks to a pair of big Walmart and American Eagle distribution centers in town.That's largely due to two Amazon fulfillment centers. Campbellsville, Kentucky has about 26,000 residents - and 20% of its working population works in e-commerce."I see e-commerce as a really good corrective to the concentration of jobs in cities and coasts."
"The pendulum is swinging back, bringing jobs to places that had been left behind" as manufacturing plants closed down, says Michael Mandel, chief economic strategist at the Democratic-leaning Progressive Policy Institute.
Why it matters: E-commerce has created the new factory town. Just as entire communities revolved around the automobile, steel and other industries in the last century, many places in America now depend almost entirely on e-commerce giants like Amazon.
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