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If you’re feeling unsteady amid stock market volatility, high inflation and rising interest rates, you may wonder how much cash you really need to have handy.
Experts may suggest three months, six months or one year of expenses, depending on your situation.

Nirunya Juntoomma | Istock | Getty Images

If you’re feeling unsteady amid stock market volatility, high inflation and rising interest rates, you may wonder how much cash you really need to have handy.
But the right amount to have in your emergency fund depends on your family’s situation and needs, financial experts say.  

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Still, with two-thirds of Americans worried about a recession, it’s easy to see why investors are anxious about savings.
More from Personal Finance:48 million families can get free or cheap high-speed internetPost-pandemic, Americans are tipping less generously for takeoutIdentity scams at an all-time high: Here are ways to protect yourselfIndeed, more than half of Americans are now concerned about their level of emergency savings, up from 44% in 2020, according to a June survey from Bankrate.
Many are concerned about falling short: Nearly one-third of Americans have less than three months of expenses in savings, and almost one-quarter have no emergency fund, Bankrate found. 
Although rock-bottom returns made cash less attractive over the past several years, that may be changing as interest rates move upward. And experts say there’s a value in the peace of mind savings brings.
Here’s how much in cash savings you need at different times in your career, according to financial advisors.

Dual-earners: Set aside at least 3 months’ of expenses

The typical recommendation for dual-income families is savings worth three to six months of living expenses, said Christopher Lyman, a certified financial planner with Allied Financial Advisors in Newtown, Pennsylvania. The reasoning: Even if one earner loses their job, there are other income streams to help the family keep up with expenses.

Single workers: Save 6 months or more

However, households with a single earner may benefit from boosting savings to six to nine months worth of expenses, Lyman said.
For both single earners and dual-income households, some advisors say it’s better to have higher cash reserves to provide “more options” in case of a job layoff. Recessions typically go hand in hand with higher unemployment, and finding a new job may not happen quickly.

Catherine Valega, a CFP and wealth consultant at Green Bee Advisory in Winchester, Massachusetts, suggests keeping 12 to 24 months of expenses in cash.  
Personal finance expert and best-selling author Suze Orman has also recommended extra savings, and recently told CNBC she pushes for eight to12 months of expenses. “If you lose your job, if you want to leave your job, that gives you the freedom to continue to pay your bills while you’re figuring out what you want to do with your life,” she said.

Entrepreneurs: Reserve 1 year of business expenses

With more economic uncertainty, Lyman recommends entrepreneurs and small-business owners try to set aside one year of business expenses.
“Taking this advice saved quite a few of our business owner clients from shutting down due to the pandemic,” he said.

Some people are uncomfortable having that much money ‘on the sideline’ and not earning anything, especially right now when stocks look to be providing a great buying opportunity.

Christopher Lyman
certified financial planner with Allied Financial Advisors LLC

Retirees: Keep 1 to 3 years of expenses in cash

With soaring inflation and relatively low interest for savings accounts, large amounts of cash may be a tough sell for some retirees. However, experts suggest keeping one to three years of expenses readily available.
“Having a sufficient cash buffer is a critical element to making your money last in retirement,” said Brett Koeppel, a CFP and founder of Eudaimonia Wealth in Buffalo, New York.
Having enough cash on hand can limit the need to sell assets when the market is down, a misstep that could drain your retirement balances faster.  
Of course, the exact amount of cash to keep on hand in retirement depends on monthly expenses and other sources of income.

For example, if your monthly expenses are $5,000 per month, you receive $3,000 from a pension and $1,000 from Social Security, you may need less in cash, around $12,000 to $36,000.   
“This allows you to maintain your longer-term investments without the risk of selling when the stock market is down,” Koeppel said.

Savings is a ‘very emotional topic’

There’s some flex in the “right” amount. Money is a “very emotional topic,” Lyman admits, noting that some clients veer from his savings recommendations.
“Some people are uncomfortable having that much money ‘on the sideline’ and not earning anything, especially right now when stocks look to be providing a great buying opportunity,” he said. 
Others were “cautious” before and now feel “thoroughly worried about the market,” which motivates them to save significantly more, Lyman said.

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‘Avatar’ and ‘Black Panther’ sequels will headline the box office in the latter part of 2022, but there isn’t much else coming out of Hollywood. That’s not good for theaters.
Studios have turned to library content, films that were previously released in theaters, to lure folks back to cinemas.
The 2023 box office has a much stronger slate of films, both in terms of number of films and diversity of content.

Set more than a decade after the events of the first film, “Avatar: The Way of Water” tells the story of the Sully family.

The 2022 box office is a Hollywood underdog story come to life.
Despite nearly 40% less film content available in theaters compared to 2019, year-to-date ticket sales are down around 30%, according to data from Comscore.

Audiences have returned to cinemas in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and are spending more than ever on tickets and popcorn. However, the lack of steady theatrical releases will weigh heavily on the industry during the final, crucial months of the year.
As it stands, there are currently only four would-be blockbuster releases coming to theaters before the end of December:

Warner Bros.’ “Black Adam” – Oct. 21
Disney and Marvel Studios’ “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” – Nov. 11
Disney Animation’s “Strange World” – Nov. 23
Disney’s “Avatar: The Way of Water” – Dec. 16

In 2019, there were nearly two dozen blockbuster-style films slated on the calendar for the last four months of the year, including “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.”
“We’re seeing right now that as we get into the fall that we kind of hit another pause,” said Shawn Robbins, chief media analyst at BoxOffice.com, “And a lot of that is, is really falling on the lingering pandemic issues.”
Those issues include production shutdowns that delayed film shoots and pressure on visual effects houses to complete projects on shortened deadlines.

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There’s no doubt that moviegoers are interested in returning to cinemas. Movies like “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” “Jurassic World: Dominion” and “Thor: Love and Thunder” have brought audiences back. However, with fewer films of all budgets on the slate, there are fewer opportunities for studios and movie theater operators to entice patrons to the big screen.
“To me, the question is now, how soon can we get back to having more of those movies like ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once,’ and ‘Elvis’ and ‘The Black Phone?'” Robbins said, noting that there is potential for some smaller film releases like “Lyle, Lyle Crocodile,” “Amsterdam” and “Don’t Worry Darling” to break out and generate stronger-than-expected ticket sales. Universal’s “Halloween Kills” will be released in theaters and on Peacock on Oct. 14.

Dwayne Johnson dressed as Black Adam speaks onstage at the Warner Bros. theatrical session with “Black Adam” and “Shazam: Fury of the Gods” panel during 2022 Comic Con International: San Diego at San Diego Convention Center on July 23, 2022 in San Diego, California.
Kevin Winter | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

“The hope is that will happen later in the fall and over the holidays,” he said. “But it’s really going to be 2023 at this point before there’s maybe some consistency on a month to month basis again.”
This is why many studios have turned to library content, films that were previously released in theaters, to lure folks back to cinemas. Already Disney has rereleased the Star Wars prequel “Rogue One” in theaters and has plans to relaunch the original “Avatar” at the end of September. Sony, too, is in the midst of releasing a souped-up version of “Spider-Man: No Way Home.”
Rereleases are nothing new in the industry, especially when it comes to major anniversary milestones for popular and iconic features, but 90% of those showings are scheduled through Fathom Events, not by the studios themselves, according to data from Comscore. Fathom is a joint venture between AMC, Regal and Cinemark that brings legacy titles back to cinemas for limited engagements.
Upcoming anniversary showings from Fathom include the 40th anniversary of “Star Trek: Wrath of Khan,” the 10th anniversary of “Pitch Perfect,” the 40th anniversary of “Poltergeist” and the 60th anniversary of “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
The company is also releasing a slate of Halloween titles in October including 1932’s “The Mummy,” 1935’s “The Bride of Frankenstein,” 1954’s “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” and 1943’s “Phantom of the Opera.” Additionally, it will celebrate the 25th anniversary of “Scream 2” and 30th anniversary of “Bram Stoker’s Dracula.”
Fathom is also working with Universal to release three Judd Apatow-produced films ahead of “Bros,” a romantic comedy hitting theaters Sept. 30.
“Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” “Trainwreck” and “Knocked Up” are set for rerelease starting Sept. 19, with pre-recorded intros from director Nicholas Stoller and co-stars Billy Eichner and Luke Macfarlane.
Action flicks have dominated the box office in 2022, so counterprogramming like these romantic comedies could entice demographics that have not been eager to return to cinemas or bring back customers looking to enjoy a different genre on the big screen.
These rereleases allow movie theaters to have supplementary content and markets “Bros” to the public, said Ray Nutt, CEO of Fathom.

Letitia Wright stars as Shuri in Marvel Studio’s “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”

Similarly, Disney hopes the rerelease of “Avatar” at the end of September will lure in fans and boost interest in the upcoming sequel “The Way of Water.”
“The box office is currently at over $5.3 billion year to date, much higher than the last two years at this point but down naturally from 2019 and 2018,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore.”
“With big movies like ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ in November and, obviously, ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ in December, among others, the industry will likely wind up with a projected 2022 domestic box office of around $7.5 billion,” he said. “That’s frankly a great outcome for an industry that saw 2020 levels at a mere $2.3 billion and a 2021 that wound up at $4.6 billion.”
Dergarabedian and Robbins noted that 2023 has a much stronger slate of films, both in terms of number of films and diversity of content. As more film come out and more frequently, the expectation is that overall domestic box office will make a stronger recovery.
The 2022 box office lost “Shazam! Fury of the Gods,” which was slated for Dec. 21, last month when Warner Bros. Discovery pushed the film to March 17, 2023. It replaced “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” which will now arriving on Christmas Day in 2023.
“The first quarter is loaded with big films that should create momentum leading into a strong summer next year,” Dergarabedian said.
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC.

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Should companies be hiring or firing? Demand for workers has roared back over the past two years so many firms need to hire. Yet at the same time fears of recession are widespread. Across industries firms are scrambling to find the right response—and coming up with different answers. Last week Snap, a social media firm, said it would fire a fifth of its workforce and noted the “difficult macro backdrop”. Mark Zuckerberg is reported to have told employees at Facebook that “there are probably a bunch of people who shouldn’t be here,” but has not announced big layoffs. Tim Cook, the boss of Apple, takes the middle course. Apple will continue to hire “in areas”, he said recently, but he was “clear-eyed” about the risks to the economy.For now the hirers are trumping the firers. Figures released on September 2nd show that American employers, excluding farms, added 315,000 workers to payrolls in August. The Jobs Openings and Labour Turnover Survey (jolts), released a few days earlier, shows there were 11.2m job openings in July. There were almost two vacancies for every unemployed person (see chart 1). The situation in Britain is similar. The Bank of England forecasts a bitter recession but Britain has a near-record level of vacancies. Why is that? Behind today’s labour paradox lies three factors. First, high churn in the labour market. Second the post-pandemic shakeup to the labour market. And lastly most businesses, fighting day-to-day battles, have limited bandwidth to deal with the new complexities of the labour market. The few that do may be able to secure a lasting advantage. Start with high churn. The jobs market is in a state of perennial change. Economic theory treats firms as if they are the same and the economy as if it is a “representative firm” writ large. In reality, firms are very different. Some businesses expand, while others shrink—in booms and in busts. The change in employment captured by indicators such as the monthly non-farm payrolls is a net figure, the difference between job creation and job destruction by enterprises and between joiners and leavers at the level of workers. These flows are large in comparison with the change in employment. In July, payrolls rose by 0.5m, but around 6.4m began new jobs and 5.9m left their old ones. The jolts data capture the rate of worker flows in a single month (see chart 2). Over the course of a year, an even larger number of people move from job to job or from not working to working (and vice versa). A rule of thumb is that jobs flow at a slower rate than workers flow. In expansions the rate of job creation trumps jobs destruction. In recessions, job destruction is greater. But churn is remarkably high at all times. Some hiring firms are also firing firms. Walmart, the largest private employer in America, confirmed in August that jobs would go at its headquarters even as it was creating some new roles. For other firms, though, a cyclical downturn is forcing a rethink. Planned layoffs at companies such as Shopify, Netflix and Robinhood are a correction to rapid hiring earlier. A lot of the historical cyclicality in hiring is down to high-growth startups and newish businesses, says John Haltiwanger of the University of Maryland. In booms providers of capital, whether venture-capital funds, banks or public-market investors, are willing to fund all sorts of enterprises. But in downturns, investors become averse to risk.Lay-offs can also be a response to deeper structural challenges. In February Ford’s boss, Jim Farley, was blunt about those at his firm: “We have too many people; we have too much investment; we have too much complexity”. In manufacturing, the need to cut jobs invariably means people get fired. But there are industries, notably retailing, where the normal rate of turnover is so high that jobs can be cut without any layoffs. Just stop hiring and payrolls will shrink. Mr Zuckerberg’s approach, it seems, is to try and hurry along Facebook’s rate of worker attrition. What about the second factor, the post-pandemic shift in the jobs market? Steven Davis, of the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business calls it the “great reshuffling”. The demand side of the jobs market has not been changed much by the pandemic, according to a a recent study by Eliza Forsythe of the University of Illinois, and three co-authors. Many of 20m American workers who were laid off in April 2020 were quickly recalled by their employers. But the supply side was more radically altered. The employment-to-population ratio remains below its pre-pandemic peak. Much of this is down to older workers retiring from the workforce, say the authors. And it is still a struggle to fill customer-facing jobs. The surge in vacancies is especially marked in the leisure, hospitality and personal-care industries. It is much the same in Britain. On a boiling weekday in August, dozens of businesses set out their stall on the campus of the University of Middlesex. Firms including JH Kenyon, a funeral directors, Metroline, a bus company and Equita, a debt-collection agency, were targeting the local unemployed—not fresh graduates. Many recruiters said job applicants used to come to them—a “constant pipeline”, according to one stallholder. But now firms need to go out and drum up applicants. Employers in America are also stepping up the intensity of recruitment. Skill requirements in adverts for customer-facing jobs have been relaxed. Pay has picked up more sharply than in other kinds of work. Ms Forsythe and her colleagues find an increased likelihood of unemployed and low-skilled workers moving into white-collar jobs. Opportunities on the higher rungs of the jobs ladder appear to have opened up, because of retirements. The combination of a looming recession, high churn and the shifts in the supply of workers is exceptionally complex to manage for most firms. In principle, a well-run business could recruit strategically across the business cycle. But for a lot of firms even the certainty of a recession in 12 months’ time would not be enough to help them fine-tune their recruitment strategy. They would need to know the magnitude, duration and industry characteristics of any recession. Turning on and off hiring in response to subtle cyclical shifts is beyond what is feasible. Firms, like people, have limited bandwidth. What bandwidth there is being expended on navigating working-from-home policies. At one extreme is Elon Musk, who has demanded that Tesla’s employees turn up in the office for at least 40 hours a week or “pretend to work somewhere else.” At the other are Yelp, a review website, which favours a “remote-first” strategy, and Spotify, which has a “work from anywhere” policy. This approach has advantages in a tight jobs market. A firm can cast its recruitment net over a wider area. Remote workers may trade off greater flexibility for lower pay. But there are obvious downsides, too. It is tough to sustain unity of purpose when colleagues barely meet each other.Can any firms navigate today’s tricky labour market well? Apple appears to be doing so. In Europe Ryanair, an airline, hoarded staff during the pandemic and began hiring aggressively as the economy reopened. It has kept flying this summer, gaining market share as rivals have cancelled flights. But for many firms finding an answer to the labour paradox will not be easy. One recruiter at the jobs fair in Britain with a pipeline of infrastructure projects says he hopes it will be unscathed by recession. Still when it comes to hiring workers in the here and now it is a scramble, “you just need to be able to turn up on time and show some willingness and commitment,” he says of his target applicant. “No previous experience is required.”■ More

Should companies be hiring or firing? Demand for workers has roared back over the past two years. At the same time fears of recession are widespread. Firms are scrambling to respond—and coming up with different answers. Last week Snap, a social-media firm, said it would fire a fifth of its workforce and noted the “difficult macro backdrop”. Mark Zuckerberg is reported to have told employees at Meta that “there are probably a bunch of people who shouldn’t be here,” but has so far not announced big lay-offs. Tim Cook, boss of Apple, takes the middle course. The iPhone-maker will continue to hire “in areas”, he said recently, but he was “clear-eyed” about the risks to the economy.For now the hirers are trumping the firers. Figures released on September 2nd show that American employers, excluding farms, added 315,000 workers in August. The Jobs Openings and Labour Turnover Survey (jolts), released a few days earlier, reported 11.2m job openings in July. There were almost two vacancies for every unemployed person (see chart 1). The situation in Britain is similar. The Bank of England forecasts a bitter recession but vacancies are near record levels. Why is that? Behind today’s labour paradox lie three factors. First, high churn in the labour market. Second, that market’s post-pandemic shake-up. Last, most businesses, fighting day-to-day battles, have limited bandwidth to deal with subtle cyclical shifts. The few that do may be able to secure a lasting advantage. Start with high churn. The job market is in a state of perennial change. Simple economic models treat all firms as the same and the economy as a “representative firm” writ large. In reality, firms are very different. Some businesses expand, while others shrink—in booms and in busts. The change in employment captured by indicators such as the monthly non-farm payrolls is a net figure, the difference between job creation and job destruction by enterprises and between joiners and leavers at the level of workers. These flows are large compared with the change in employment. In July payrolls rose by 500,000, but around 6.4m began new jobs and 5.9m left their old ones. The jolts data capture the rate of worker flows in a single month (see chart 2). Over the course of a year, an even larger number of people move from job to job or from not working to working (and vice versa). As a rule of thumb, jobs flow at a slower rate than workers. In expansions job creation outweighs jobs destruction. In recessions, job destruction is greater. But churn is high at all times. Some hiring firms are also firing firms. Walmart, America’s largest private employer, confirmed in August that jobs would go at its headquarters even as it was creating some new roles. For other businesses, a cyclical downturn is forcing a rethink. Planned lay-offs at firms like Netflix, Robinhood and Shopify are a correction to rapid hiring earlier. A lot of the historical cyclicality in hiring is down to high-growth startups and newish businesses, says John Haltiwanger of the University of Maryland. In booms providers of capital, be they venture-capital funds, banks or public-market investors, are willing to fund all sorts of enterprises. In downturns, they become averse to risk.Lay-offs can also be a response to deeper structural challenges. In February Ford’s boss, Jim Farley, was blunt about those at the carmaker: “We have too many people; we have too much investment; we have too much complexity.” In manufacturing, the need to cut jobs invariably means people get fired. But there are industries, notably retailing, where the normal rate of turnover is so high that jobs can be cut without any terminations. Just stop hiring and payrolls will shrink. Mr Zuckerberg’s approach, it seems, is to try and hurry along Meta’s rate of worker attrition. What about the second factor, the post-pandemic shift in the job market? Steven Davis of the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business calls it the “great reshuffling”. The demand side of the market has not been changed much by covid-19, according to a recent study by Eliza Forsythe of the University of Illinois and three co-authors. Many of the 20m Americans who were laid off in April 2020 were quickly recalled by their employers. The supply side was more radically altered. The employment-to-population ratio remains below its pre-pandemic peak, mostly as a result of older workers exiting the workforce, say the authors. And it is still a struggle to fill customer-facing jobs. The surge in vacancies is especially marked in the leisure, hospitality and personal-care industries. Employers in America are stepping up the intensity of recruitment. Skills requirements in adverts for customer-facing jobs have been relaxed. Pay has picked up more sharply than in other kinds of work. Ms Forsythe and colleagues find an increased likelihood of unemployed and low-skilled workers moving into white-collar jobs. Opportunities on the higher rungs of the jobs ladder appear to have opened up, because of retirements. It is much the same in Britain. On a boiling weekday in August, dozens of businesses set out their stall on the campus of the University of Middlesex. Firms like JH Kenyon, a funeral director, Metroline, a bus company, and Equita, a debt-collection agency, were targeting not fresh graduates but the local unemployed. Recruiters recalled how jobseekers used to come to them—a “constant pipeline”, according to one. Now firms are doing the seeking. The combination of a looming recession, high churn and the shifts in the supply of workers is exceptionally complex to manage for most firms. In principle, a well-run business could recruit strategically across the business cycle. In practice, even the certainty of a recession in 12 months’ time would not be enough to help firms fine-tune hiring. They would need to know the magnitude, duration and industry characteristics of any recession. Turning hiring on and off in response to subtle cyclical shifts is unfeasible. Firms, like people, have limited bandwidth—and that bandwidth is being expended on navigating work-from-home policies. At one extreme is Elon Musk, who has told Tesla’s employees to turn up in the office for at least 40 hours a week or “pretend to work somewhere else”. At the other are Yelp, a review website, which favours a “remote-first” strategy, and Spotify, which allows “work from anywhere”. This approach has advantages in a tight job market. It lets firms cast recruitment nets over a wider area. Remote workers may trade off greater flexibility for lower pay. But there are obvious downsides, too. It is tough to sustain unity of purpose when colleagues barely meet each other.Can any firms navigate today’s tricky labour market well? Apple appears to be doing so. In Europe Ryanair, an airline, hoarded staff during the pandemic and began hiring aggressively as the economy reopened. It has kept flying this summer, gaining market share as rivals have cancelled flights. But for many firms finding an answer to the labour paradox will not be easy. One recruiter at the jobs fair in Britain with a pipeline of infrastructure projects says he hopes it will be unscathed by recession. Still, when it comes to hiring workers in the here and now, it is a scramble. “You just need to be able to turn up on time and show some willingness and commitment,” he says of his target applicant. “No previous experience is required.” ■For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics, business and markets, sign up to Money Talks, our weekly newsletter. More

Bed Bath & Beyond on Sunday confirmed that Chief Financial Officer Gustavo Arnal died, after police had said earlier that Arnal fell to his death on Friday.
The medical examiner’s office told CNBC that Arnal died by suicide.
Bed Bath said in a statement on Sunday that Arnal “was instrumental in guiding the organization throughout the coronavirus pandemic.”

Signage outside a Bed Bath & Beyond retail store in New York, Aug. 25, 2022.
Gabby Jones | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Bed Bath & Beyond on Sunday said its chief financial officer, Gustavo Arnal, died Friday, after police had said earlier that Arnal fell to his death.
The New York City medical examiner’s office said Sunday night the executive died from multiple blunt trauma and that he had taken his own life. Arnal left no note behind and did not say anything to his wife, who was home at the time, sources told WNBC.

“The entire Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. organization is profoundly saddened by this shocking loss,” the company said in a statement.
Arnal, 52, fell Friday afternoon from a building in downtown Manhattan, according to police. The iconic skyscraper, known locally as the “Jenga Tower” or the “Jenga Building,” has more than 50 floors of uniquely stacked apartments.
Emergency Medical Services declared Arnal deceased on the scene, according to a spokesperson from New York’s Office of the Deputy Commissioner, the public information office for the city’s police department.
Arnal joined Bed Bath in 2020 from London-based cosmetics company Avon, just after the start of the coronavirus pandemic. He also spent 20 years at Procter & Gamble. In Bed Bath’s statement on Sunday, the company noted that Arnal “was instrumental in guiding the organization throughout the coronavirus pandemic.”
Since joining Bed Bath, Arnal made several purchases and sales of company stock. Last month, he sold more than 55,000 shares at prices ranging from $20 per share to $29.95 per share, for a total $1.23 million, according to a filing. Those sales were made as part of a trading plan he had signed in April. The document also noted he still held 255,396 shares after those latest sales.

Bed Bath’s recent struggles

Bed Bath’s stock is down 43% this year — and about 90% from its all-time high.
Arnal died two days after the company announced plans to close 150 stores of its “lower producing” namesake stores. The New Jersey-based retailer also said it would be cutting 20% of its staff and added that it had secured more than $500 million in new financing, including a loan.
The cost-cutting measures come as Bed Bath’s core business continues to struggle. The company disclosed continuing slowing sales on Wednesday, with same-store sales dropping 26% for the three-month window ended Aug. 27 — a bigger drop than in previous quarters. 
Some analysts say that while the turnaround plan announced Wednesday will improve the company’s liquidity position, it won’t be sufficient to save Bed Bath’s business. Raymond James downgraded the stock Thursday, saying that the cost cuts and new financing “only kicks the can down the road.” 
Bed Bath is one of the public companies swept up in the so-called “meme trade,” which sees stocks experience wild price swings based on social media hype among retail investors. In August, Bed Bath had multiple days with price moves of more than 20%.
In mid-August, activist investor Ryan Cohen, a major Bed Bath shareholder, exited his position. Cohen’s RC Ventures sold its Bed Bath holdings at a range of prices between $18.68 per share and $29.22 per share. After the sale, the stock plummeted 40%.
Bed Bath also faces a class action lawsuit recently filed in the District of Columbia, accusing it of misrepresenting its value and profitability. Arnal is named in the suit, as is Cohen.
Bed Bath told CNBC that it would not comment on litigation. In an SEC filing from Aug. 31, the company noted that it was “evaluating the complaint” but that based on current knowledge, it believed the claims were “without merit.”
If you are having suicidal thoughts, contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 for support and assistance from a trained counselor.
— Additional reporting by CNBC’s Dan Mangan.

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Movie theaters pulled in $24.3 million in ticket sales from the National Cinema Day promotion, according to Comscore.
Sales figures represent a 9% increase from the previous week.

An AMC movie theater in New York.
Scott Mlyn | CNBC

A $3 movie ticket promotion meant to boost sales across cinemas during a typically sleepy weekend for the business has drawn in 8.1 million customers, according to the National Association of Theater Owners.
By those numbers, Saturday was the best day of the year for movie theater attendance, the group said.

Movie theaters pulled in $24.3 million in ticket sales from the National Cinema Day promotion, according to Comscore. The media analytics company said that was a 9% increase from the previous week.
More than 3,000 cinemas and 30,000 screens in the U.S. participated in the initiative, including major chains like AMC Entertainment and Regal Cinemas as well as independent theaters. Featured films included Paramount’s “Top Gun: Maverick,” Warner Bros Discovery’s “DC League of Super-Pets” and Sony’s “Bullet Train.”
Some theater chains offered discounts on concessions as well.
Ticket sales have fizzled in recent weeks, in part due to fewer summer releases.
The nonprofit Cinema Foundation, which is part of the National Association of Theater Owners, hoped the discount ticket initiative would incite customers to come back to theaters, especially ahead of some big releases planned for the fall, like Warner Bros. Discovery’s “Black Adam” and Disney’s “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”

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Should companies be hiring or firing? Demand for workers has roared back over the past two years. But labour supply has not kept pace, and shortages are pervasive. That means many firms need to hire. On the other hand, fears of recession are widespread. Some bosses suspect they already have too many workers. Mark Zuckerberg has told Facebook employees that “there are probably a bunch of people who shouldn’t be here”. Tim Cook, the head of Apple, takes the middle course. Apple will continue to hire “in areas”, he said recently, but he was “clear-eyed” about the risks to the economy.For now the hirers are trumping the firers. Figures released on September 2nd show that American employers, excluding farms, added 315,000 workers to payrolls in August. The Jobs Openings and Labour Turnover Survey (jolts), released a few days earlier, found 11.2m job openings in July. America’s unemployment rate ticked up from a 50-year low of 3.5% to 3.7%, but only because of a sudden influx of jobseekers to the labour market. Put another way, there were almost two job vacancies for every unemployed person in America (see chart 1). The situation in Britain is similar. The Bank of England forecasts a protracted recession. Even so, Britain has a near-record level of vacancies. Businesses in both countries are hiring as if a downturn might never come.To understand these puzzling jobs trends, keep three important influences in mind. First, there is always a lot of churn in the labour market. The foundations of economic theory treat firms as if they are all the same, and the economy is just this “representative firm” writ large. In reality, companies differ from one another. Some expand, while others shrink—in booms and in busts. The firms that will be forced to fire workers in any recession are probably not the same as those that are furiously hiring now. A second factor is what Steven Davis, of the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, calls the “great reshuffling”. This refers to a post-pandemic shakeup in employment in response to changes in the preferences of workers. It explains a lot of the frantic activity in the jobs market. The third issue is that organisations have limited bandwidth. In principle, a well-run business could recruit strategically across the business cycle. Some, like Apple, appear to do so. Ryanair hoarded staff during the pandemic hiatus and began hiring aggressively as the economy reopened. Its planes have kept flying this summer, while rivals have cancelled flights. But such firms are exceptions. Most businesses are not nearly as nimble. Start with the perennial churn in the jobs market. The change in employment captured by indicators such as the monthly non-farm payrolls is a net figure. It is the difference between two flow measures—between job creation and job destruction by enterprises, and between joiners and leavers at the level of workers. These flows are large in comparison with the change in employment. In July payrolls rose by 0.5m, but around 6.5m workers took new jobs and 5.9m left their old jobs. The jolts data captures the rate of worker flows in a single month (see chart 2). Over the course of a year, an even larger number of people move from job to job, or from not working to working (and back). A rule of thumb is that jobs flow at a slower rate than workers flow. (Imagine a hypothetical firm with two joiners and one leaver: workers move but the net change is one created job). In expansions, the rate of job creation trumps destruction. In recessions, job destruction is greater. But churn is remarkably high at all times. Some hiring firms are also firing firms. Walmart, the largest private employer in America, recently confirmed that around 200 jobs would go at its headquarters. But the retailer said it was also creating some new roles. While jobs are being created in the aggregate, not every business is furiously hiring. For some firms a cyclical downturn is forcing a rethink on staffing. Planned layoffs at companies like Shopify, Netflix or Robinhood are a correction to previous bouts of rapid hiring. For other businesses, layoffs are a response to deeper structural challenges. In February Ford’s boss, Jim Farley, was blunt about his firm’s challenges: “We have too many people; we have too much investment; we have too much complexity”. In manufacturing, the need to cut jobs invariably means people get fired. But there are industries, notably retailing, where the normal rate of turnover is so high that jobs can be cut without any layoffs. Just stop hiring, and payrolls will shrink. This leads to the second big issue on recruitment: the great reshuffling. A recent study by Eliza Forsythe, of the University of Illinois, and three co-authors portrays a jobs market in which the demand side was not changed much by the pandemic. Many of the 20m American workers laid off in April 2020 were quickly recalled by their employers. But the supply side was more radically altered. The number of adults in work as a share of all adults—the employment-to-population ratio—remains below its pre-pandemic peak. Much of this is down to older workers retiring from the workforce, say the authors. Another consequence of the pandemic has been a struggle to fill customer-facing jobs. The surge in vacancies is especially marked in the leisure, hospitality and personal-care industries.It is much the same in Britain. On a boiling hot weekday in August, dozens of businesses have set out their stall on the campus of the University of Middlesex in Barnet, a London borough. These firms are looking to fill a backlog of vacancies. The target applicants are not graduates, but the local unemployed. Among the companies are JH Kenyon, a funeral directors; Metroline, a bus company; and Equita, a debt-collection agency. Many recruiters say applicants used to come to them—a “constant pipeline”, says one stallholder. But now firms need to go out and drum them up. Employers in America are also stepping up the intensity of recruitment. Skills requirements in ads for customer-facing jobs have been relaxed. Pay has picked up more sharply than in other kinds of work. Ms Forsythe and her colleagues find an increased likelihood of unemployed and low-skilled workers moving into white-collar jobs. Opportunities on the higher rungs of the jobs ladder appear to have opened up, because of retirements. The third big influence on recruitment trends is organisational capacity. The huge crosscurrents in the economy are taxing the capabilities of business. Apple sells discretionary goods. It has to keep an eye on the cycle, because in downturns people will delay upgrading their Mac or iPhone. But for a lot of firms even the certainty of a recession in 12 months’ time would not be enough knowledge to help them fine-tune their recruitment strategy. They would need to know the magnitude, duration and industry characteristics of any recession, and not only the fact and timing of it. Turning hiring on and off in response to subtle cyclical shifts is not feasible for a lot of firms. Bosses need to ensure the whole organisation is aligned on objectives. Firms, like people, have limited bandwidth. And recession fears are probably not the main influence on recruitment strategy just now. For many employers, says Mr Davis, the key decision is whether and how to accommodate the desire of employees to work from home. There is a spectrum of responses. At one extreme is Elon Musk, who has gruffly demanded that Tesla employees turn up in the office for at least 40 hours a week or “pretend to work somewhere else.” At the other end is Yelp, a popular review website, which favours a “remote-first” strategy, and Spotify, which has a “work from anywhere” policy. This approach has advantages in a tight jobs market. A firm can cast its recruitment net over a wider area. And there is evidence that remote workers will trade greater flexibility for lower pay. But there are obvious downsides, too. It is tough to sustain corporate culture or unity of purpose when colleagues barely meet.For some kinds of firms, the cycle will eventually bite. A lot of the historical cyclicality in hiring is down to high-growth startups and newish businesses, says John Haltiwanger of the University of Maryland. In booms, providers of capital—whether venture-capital funds, banks or public-market investors—are willing to fund all kinds of enterprises. But in downturns investors become averse to risk. And young firms without a long track record find it harder to finance their growth. Hiring across the economy then suffers.It is natural to believe that your firm is recession-proof, and that your rivals will suffer. The archetypal “man in a van”, who specialises in renovations, will struggle next year, says a recruiter at the Barnet jobs fair. Bigger building firms that are part of large infrastructure projects, such as his, have a pipeline of projects. But with workers so scarce, he is as clear-eyed as Mr Cook about what is possible. “You just need to be able to turn up on time and show some willingness and commitment,” he says of his target applicant. “No previous experience is required.” ■ More

Electric vehicles require 30% fewer parts and components manufacturing than conventional cars, according to researchers for the Industrial Heartland case study.
Large swaths of the Midwest have economies based around the auto parts manufacturing trade, fueling competition between states to bring new factory investments forward.

The race to build electric vehicles in the U.S. is heating up as fresh rounds of investment come out of Washington. Workers at the former heart of the auto industry fear being left behind.”When we look carefully at what goes on on the factory floor, it won’t be less workers,” Keith Cooley, former head of Michigan’s Labor Department, told CNBC. “There will be different people building the cars.”Researchers believe modern factory jobs will require more education and could be less available than they were in the past. They estimate that electric vehicles could require 30% less manufacturing labor when compared with conventional cars. “The lines that run to drive oil or gas around an internal combustion engine aren’t going to be there,” said Cooley.This change could hit the parts suppliers in the auto industry, many of whom are concentrated near Midwestern cities such as Kokomo, Indiana; Lima, Ohio; and Detroit, Michigan.”Car companies in some of these places actually make up a decent proportion of the tax revenue, and they employ many people within the surrounding community,” Sanya Carley, an Indiana University professor and contributor to the Industrial Heartland study, told CNBC. “So the fate of these companies is very intimately tied to the fate of the communities.”Leaders in Washington hope two key pieces of legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act, which were signed into law by President Joe Biden in August, will provide a bridge to that future. These laws authorize billions in incentives for businesses that pursue clean energy manufacturing.With funding in the pipeline, automakers are now wondering how quickly demand for electric vehicles will materialize. In 2021, 9% of global auto sales were of electric vehicles, according to the International Energy Agency.Watch the video to learn more about how the electric vehicle revolution will impact the economies of states across the U.S. Midwest.

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