Retail market still below pre- recession levels!?

Well everything else seems to be normalizing except retail. They are still below the level they were at before the recession. So what is going on? The feds are saying that consumer spending is back to normal so where are all the figures then. This seems very fishy to me. Here are the statistics from market watch. Don't forget to subscribe or follow us. Thanks

Details on retail still not pretty

Retailers have boosted employment by 650,000 since the recession ended, making the industry the fourth fastest growing segment of the economy.

Yet in a sign of lingering weakness in the U.S., the retail industry is still a half-million jobs short of its high-water mark of 15.6 million workers. Scarred by the Great Recession, Americans just aren’t spending as much.

Nor is retail a lucrative line of work. The average salary is just $16.63 an hour — about 30% less than the nationwide average. And the average employee works less than 32 hours a week, partly reflecting the volatility of consumer-shopping patterns. Retailers don’t need the same number of workers each month.