Riley Breakell, a Starbucks barista in Connecticut, was reassured in mid-March when the company sent a letter announcing expanded catastrophe pay for those absent because of the pandemic. Even though she couldn’t live on the roughly $250 per week she received from Starbucks while her store was closed for a month and a half, she…
On April 10, Tony Thompson, the sheriff for Black Hawk County in Iowa, visited the giant Tyson Foods pork plant in Waterloo. What he saw, he said, “shook me to the core.” Workers, many of them immigrants, were crowded elbow to elbow as they broke down hog carcasses zipping by on a conveyor belt. The…
The unemployment rate soared last month to 14.7 percent, the highest level on record, according to government data released Friday. In February, it was 3.5 percent, a half-century low. While states try to gradually reopen after sheltering and shutdowns, barely more than half the adult population of the United States now has a job. Among…
Tesla told employees it would restart its factory in Fremont, Calif., on Friday. But the electric car company’s plans do not comply with a local government order that has not cleared large manufacturers to resume operations. The company informed employees of the plan in companywide emails sent late Thursday and early Friday. The emails were…
Layoffs continue to tear through the country, enveloping more industries even as states take tentative steps toward reopening the economy, with the government reporting on Thursday that an additional 3.2 million jobless claims were filed last week. The weekly tallies have declined since reaching a peak of 6.9 million claims in late March, but the…
The coronavirus pandemic has brought wave after wave of catastrophic economic data: The worst decline in gross domestic product in a decade. The worst retail sales report on record. The worst week ever for unemployment claims, and then two more twice as bad as that. But even by those recent standards, the April jobs numbers…
The coronavirus pandemic has brought wave after wave of catastrophic economic data: The worst decline in gross domestic product in a decade. The worst retail sales report on record. The worst week ever for unemployment claims, and then two more twice as bad as that. But even by those recent standards, the April jobs numbers…
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is considering a wide range of tax-cut proposals for businesses and investors in the next coronavirus response bill as it tries to shift from government spending programs to support the economy toward measures that aim to reinvigorate growth. The list of ideas under discussion includes a reduction in the capital…
Companies releasing first-quarter results in recent weeks have detailed how the coronavirus pandemic is crushing their business, and many have gone so far as to stop offering forecasts for the rest of the year, claiming the future is just too uncertain. Still, that didn’t stop some companies from pointing to glimmers of hope. Some senior…
By the time Robert L. Stevenson gathered his work force at Eastman Machine in Buffalo in mid-March, businesses nationwide were shutting down. But Eastman, which makes fabric-cutting machines, has been in family hands for four generations, and Mr. Stevenson wasn’t about to turn off the lights. Standing atop a table in the lunchroom just off…