Macy's to cut over 10,000 jobs with closure of 68 stores

US department store operator Macy's said on Wednesday that it will close 68 of its stores in the country with total job cuts of over 10,000.

Lagging sales for the company during the holiday season was the tipping point which led to the store closures, with a 2.1% fall in sales in November and December compared with the same period in 2015.

Customers have turned to other low-cost alternatives in the US such as TJ Maxx, as well as online retail through Amazon and other e-commerce companies.

Macy's announced in August that it would be closing up to 100 of its 730 stores in the country, and it identified 68 of those on Wednesday. The stores which will close include one in Queens and other outlets in New York and New Jersey.

The job cuts are said to represent around 7% of its workforce, and although the company has said some of those may be offered positions in other stores, there has been no guarantees as of yet.

"We continue to experience declining traffic in our stores where the majority of our business is still transacted," said Macy's chairman and chief executive officer Terry J. Lundgren.

Lundgren added that it was unlikely that 2017 will see a drastic change in the company's fortunes.

"Given the overall trends challenging us and the broader retail industry, and the time needed to execute new strategies, we expect our 2017 change in comparable sales to be relatively consistent with our November/December sales trend," he added.