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Walmart Holiday Shopping Plans Are Laid Months Before Black Friday

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To prepare for ever-longer shopping season, thousands of employees were assembled for a retail jamboree in Florida’s August heat.It felt like calculated chaos inside the chilly convention center where Walmart had recreated one of its Supercenter stores. It was late August in Orlando, Fla., and the retailer had flown in thousands of workers to have a look. They were zipping around, trying to take it all in.There were dozens of lit-up Christmas trees and poinsettias, rows of Halloween candy, and racks of knit dresses and sweaters. A Minnie Mouse mascot danced around the toy section, while wacky inflatable ghosts and foxes hovered above the inflatable jack-o’-lanterns in a pumpkin patch. Along the way, Walmart workers were chowing down on samples of pulled pork and chips, Oreo cookies and ice cream.A candy cane door frame welcomed people to the North Pole — and into Walmart’s annual business meeting for the holiday shopping season.On that sweltering day, the nation’s largest retailer was trying to set the mood for holidays that were still months off. But foremost on the agenda for the 6,700 attendees was Walmart’s slate of fall and winter events.Beyond the festive mood, the holiday season is full of high stakes. It’s the busiest quarter of the year for most retailers, and Walmart’s preparations offer insights into consumer behavior and the state of the retail industry.Last year, Walmart began to see people starting their holiday shopping in earnest around Halloween.Todd Anderson for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Why the Fed’s Jackson Hole Confab Matters for Wall St. and the Economy

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    The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s annual conference in Wyoming gets a lot of buzz. Here’s why it matters for Wall Street and the economy.Anyone who has flipped through newspapers or business television channels this week might have noticed two words on repeat: Jackson Hole.They refer to the premier central banking conference of the year, which is held late each August at the Jackson Lake Lodge in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. This year’s conference kicks off Thursday and runs through Saturday.To the uninitiated, it might seem weird that what is arguably the most important economic event in the world is held in remote Wyoming, two time zones away from the Federal Reserve’s Washington-based Board of Governors and 1,047 miles from its host, the Kansas City Fed. And the symposium itself is hardly your average conference. Loafers cede to cowboy boots. Attendees snack on huckleberry pastries (or swill huckleberry drinks) while discussing the latest economic papers.But if Jackson Hole is a little bit incongruous, it is also unquestionably important, an invite-only gathering where paradigm-shaping research is presented and momentous policy shifts are announced. The event has long been an obsession on Wall Street.This year will be no exception. Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, is scheduled to speak Friday morning, and markets are waiting anxiously to parse his remarks for even the slightest hint about how much the Fed might cut interest rates at its meeting next month — and how quickly central bankers will reduce borrowing costs after that.Wondering how a monetary policy conference held at the tail end of August became such a big deal and why it has stayed that way? Curious whether this year’s Jackson Hole conference will matter for mortgage rates or job prospects?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    How the Jackson Hole Conference Became an Economic Obsession

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    Investors and economists are watching the event this week closely. How did a remote Wyoming conference become so central?Filmmakers have Cannes. Billionaires have Davos. Economists? They have Jackson Hole.The world’s most exclusive economic get-together takes place this week in the valley at the base of the Teton mountains, in a lodge that is a scenic 34 miles from Jackson, Wyo.Here, in a western-chic hotel that was donated to the national park that surrounds it by a member of the Rockefeller family, about 120 economists descend late each August to discuss a set of curated papers centered on a policy-relevant theme. Top officials from around the world can often be found gazing out the lobby’s floor-to-ceiling windows — likely hoping for a moose sighting — or debating the merits of a given inflation model over huckleberry cocktails.This shindig, while a nerdy one, has become a key focus of Wall Street investors, academics and the press. The conference’s host, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, seems to know a thing or two about the laws of supply and demand: It invites way fewer people than would like to attend, which only serves to bid up its prestige. But even more critically, Jackson Hole tends to generate big news.The most hotly anticipated event is a speech by the Fed chair that typically takes place on Friday morning and is often used as a chance for the central bank to send a signal about policy. Jerome H. Powell, the current Fed head, has made headlines with each and every one of his Jackson Hole speeches, which has investors waiting anxiously for this year’s. It is the only part of the closed-door conference that is broadcast to the public.Mr. Powell will be speaking at a moment when the Fed’s next moves are uncertain as inflation moderates but the economy retains a surprising amount of momentum. Wall Street is trying to figure out whether Fed officials think that they need to raise interest rates more this year, and if so, whether that move is likely to come in September. So far, policymakers have given little clear signal about their plans. They have lifted interest rates to 5.25 to 5.5 percent from near zero in March 2022, and have left their options open to do more.People will pay close attention to Mr. Powell’s speech, but “I think it’s about the tone,” said Seth Carpenter, a former Fed economist who is now at Morgan Stanley. “What I don’t think he wants to do is signal or commit to any near-term policy moves.”For all of its modern renown, the Jackson Hole conference, set for Thursday night to Saturday, has not always been the talk of the town in Washington and New York. Here’s how it became what it is today.It’s set in the formerly wild West.Jackson used to play host to a very different cast of characters: The town was once so remote that it was a go-to hideaway for outlaws.In 1920, when Jackson’s population was about 300, The New York Times harked back to a not-so-distant era when “whenever a serious crime was committed between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Coast, it was pretty safe to guess that the man responsible for it was either headed for Jackson’s Hole or already had reached it.”Jackson’s seclusion also meant that the area’s towering, craggy mountains and rolling valley remained pristine, making it prime territory for conservationists. The financier and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. stealthily acquired and then donated much of the land that would eventually become the Jackson Hole section of Grand Teton National Park. And around 1950, he began to construct the Jackson Lake Lodge.The lodge’s modern architecture was not initially beloved by the locals. (“‘A slab-sided, concrete abomination’ is one of the milder epithets tossed at the massive structure,” The Times quipped in 1955.) Among other complaints, Rockefeller’s donation to the park lacked resort perks: no golf course, no spa.But by 1982, its ample space and sweeping vistas had caught the eye of the Kansas City Fed, which was looking for a new location for a conference it had begun to hold in 1978.The gathering has happened there since 1982.The Jackson Lake Lodge was built by the financier John D. Rockefeller Jr. on land he had donated to Grand Teton National Park.David Paul Morris/BloombergHigh on its list of charms, the Jackson Lake Lodge was close to excellent fly fishing — a surefire way to appeal to the Fed chair at the time, Paul A. Volcker. He came, and between the A-list attendees and the location’s natural beauty, Jackson Hole quickly became the Fed event of the year.“About one-half of the 137 people invited this year attended, a remarkably high response,” The Times reported in 1985.The size of the conference has not changed much since: It averages about 115 to 120 attendees per year, according to the Kansas City Fed. The response rate has gone up markedly since 1985, though the Fed branch declined to specify how much.But the local context has shifted.Teton County, home to Jackson (now a bustling town of 11,000) and Jackson Hole, hosts more millionaires than criminal cowboys these days. It has become the most unequal place in America by several measures, with gaping wealth and income divides. The event, billed as rustic, now struggles to pretend that its backdrop isn’t posh.And the Fed gathering itself has gained more and more cachet. Alan Greenspan delivered the opening speech at the conference in Jackson Hole in 1991, when he was Fed chair, and then kept up that tradition for 14 summers until he stepped down.His successors have mostly followed suit. Mr. Powell has used his speeches to caution against overreliance on hard-to-determine economic variables, to unveil an entirely new framework for monetary policy and to pledge that the Fed would do what it took to wrangle rapid inflation.But it’s changing.Attention to Jackson Hole also deepened because of the 2008 global financial crisis, when central banks rescued markets and propped up economies in ways that expanded their influence. In the years that followed, uninvited journalists, Wall Street analysts and protest groups began to camp out in the lodge’s lobby during proceedings. Speaking at or presiding over a Jackson Hole session increasingly marked an economist as an academic rock star.Esther George, president of the Kansas City Fed between 2011 and early 2023, was in charge as the event garnered more notice. She and her team responded to the intensified spotlight partly by shaking up who got to bask in it.Far fewer banking and finance industry economists have gotten invites to the event since 2014, partly in response to public attention to the Fed’s Wall Street connections after the financial crisis. The people who make the list tend to be current and former top economic officials and up-and-coming academics. Increasingly, they are women, people from racially diverse backgrounds and people with varying economic viewpoints.Ms. George started to hold an informal happy hour for female economists in 2012, when there were so few women that “we could all sit around a small table,” she recalled. It made her think: “Why aren’t these other voices here?”Last year, the happy hour included dozens of women.But the Jackson Hole conference could be entering a new era. Ms. George had to retire in 2023 per Fed rules, so while she helped to plan this conference, she’ll be passing the baton for future events to her successor, Jeffrey Schmid, a university administrator and former chief executive of Mutual of Omaha Bank. He started as Kansas City Fed president on Monday and will make his debut as a Fed official at the gathering this week. More

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    The World Economic Forum in Davos is still happening, for now.

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    The World Economic Forum is planning to go ahead with its annual meeting of the global elite in Davos, Switzerland, next month, even as coronavirus cases spike around the world.“We are hopeful that Delta will be on its way down by the time of our annual meeting, and we are hoping that the Omicron wave will not be as bad as some people think,” Peter Vanham, a spokesman for the organization, said on Thursday. “But everything depends on the pandemic.”Mr. Vanham said a final decision on whether to cancel the event — which drew roughly 3,000 people before the pandemic — will be made by Jan. 6, 10 days before it is scheduled to start.For more than 50 years, the World Economic Forum has brought together luminaries from the worlds of business, politics and nonprofit organizations to the Alps for a weeklong series of lectures, panel discussions and dinners. At the event, held in an upscale ski resort town, world leaders mingle with the chief executives from many of the world’s largest companies and the top bosses of Wall Street. Thousands more gather to attend unofficial conferences, dinners and parties on the sidelines of the main meeting.The last time people gathered in Davos was in January 2020, when many executives heard about Covid-19 for the first time. Much of the world shut down roughly two months later, and the 2021 gathering was canceled.But for the past several months, the World Economic Forum, which is based in Geneva, has been making plans to proceed with its annual meeting much as it had before the pandemic. The organizers have begun transforming Davos into labyrinth of high-security event spaces that includes a conference center, several hotels and a long stretch of the town’s main street.“We’re well into the phase where our sunk costs are being made,” Mr. Vanham said. “That’s a decision in itself — to prepare fully for next month, even if that means that in two or three weeks we might be confronted with a late cancellation because of Omicron. But we are definitely full steam ahead at this point.”The event’s organizers were emboldened by the fact that the Delta variant, which had sent average daily coronavirus cases in Switzerland to their highest level of the pandemic not long ago, had crested. Omicron, which Mr. Vanham called “the X factor,” has introduced uncertainly recently. “We will know just how bad that X factor is by the end of the year,” he said.Official attendance for the January event will be reduced by a fifth, Mr. Vanham said. He added that hotels in Davos were also expecting roughly 30 to 50 percent fewer attendees than in previous years.Still, thousands of attendees are planning to attend, including the chief executives of companies like Verizon, AstraZeneca and IBM. The leaders of at least three Wall Street banks, who often speak on the forum’s main stage, are still planning to attend for now, according to executives with knowledge of their banks’ plans.Bankers, who often use the forum to network with clients, are scheduling meetings for now and postponing the decision on whether to attend or cancel until closer to Jan. 16, when the event is slated to begin.Should the event go ahead, the organizers will install stringent measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. All those who attend the official meeting are required to be vaccinated and have a negative PCR test within 72 hours of flying to Switzerland. Once they land in the country, they have to take another test and will only receive their credentials if they test negative.And once the meeting begins, the organizers are planning to require attendees to take PCR tests every 24 or 48 hours at one of 14 on-site testing centers. More

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    New York City’s Economy Is Dealt a New Blow by the Delta Variant

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    For New York City and its trillion-dollar economy, September was supposed to mark a return to normal, a moment when Broadway theaters reopened, stores and restaurants hummed, and tourists and office workers again filled the streets.But that long-awaited milestone has been upended by the Delta variant of the coronavirus. One big company after another has postponed plans to come back to Manhattan’s soaring towers. Trade shows have been canceled. Some small businesses have had orders evaporate.It is a setback for a city that has lagged behind the rest of the country in its economic recovery, with a 10.5 percent unemployment rate that is nearly twice the national average. Now, rather than seeing the fuller rebound it was counting on, New York is facing fresh challenges.“The Delta variant is a meaningful threat to the city’s recovery,” said Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “This is not going to be easy. It’s going to be a long time before New York City gets its economic groove back.”Covid-19 cases have risen sharply in the city since early July, reaching the highest level since April. Hospitalizations have not risen as greatly, and the death rate has remained low. The situation is worrisome enough, however, that the city has begun requiring patrons and employees of bars, restaurants, gyms and indoor entertainment venues to show proof of vaccination — a development unforeseen when the summer began.Staff members checking the vaccination status of patrons at the Beacon Theater.The city has established a vaccination mandate for some indoor establishments. Beginning Sept. 13, it will fine businesses that do not comply. There are signs of hope, or at least determination. Broadway shows, a major tourist magnet, are on track for a September reopening, as is in-person instruction in city schools, which will free some caregivers to return to the work force. But even as the city sponsored an official Homecoming Week, capped by a concert on Saturday in Central Park that was cut short by lightning, cancellations of trade shows and other big events have mounted.Regaining momentum could be painfully slow. James Parrott, an economist with the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School, expects the city to add 20,000 to 30,000 jobs a month in the fall, instead of 40,000 to 50,000, because of Delta.Overall employment remains more than half a million jobs below where it was before the pandemic, with steep losses persisting in the leisure and hospitality industries and in other blue-collar fields. Recouping those service jobs depends in part on the return of white-collar workers who have worked remotely — and have even left the city.Many companies had aimed to bring employees back to the office shortly after Labor Day, at least part-time. But those plans have been scrapped. Facebook, which employs 4,000 people in New York, has put off a return until January, while the financial giants BlackRock and Wells Fargo are now planning a return in October.“Data, not dates, is what drives our approach for returning to the office,” Facebook said in a statement. “We continue to monitor the situation and work with experts to ensure our return to office plans prioritize everyone’s safety.”Boston Properties, which owns nearly 12 million square feet of space in the New York region, said about 40 percent of prepandemic occupants had returned to its buildings earlier in the summer, based on lobby badge swipes. In August, amid Delta’s rise and vacation getaways, that figure had dipped to around 30 percent, said Owen Thomas, the company’s chief executive.“I think the return to the office is a ‘when’ question, not an ‘if’ question,” he said. “Delta is affecting the when.”There are some “if” questions nonetheless. As remote work extends well into a second year, and as much of the contact between professionals and clients continues to be conducted online, it is less clear whether some suburban workers will ever return to the city and to their sometimes-arduous commutes.As companies put off bringing employees back to offices, service businesses that cater to office workers have suffered.An empty plaza in Midtown Manhattan.A shuttered newsstand.As remote work extends well into a second year, the eventual return of some suburbanites to Manhattan’s office towers becomes more uncertain.Greenberg Traurig, a global law firm, was planning to move into four floors of a new building near Grand Central Terminal in October. But many of Greenberg’s lawyers and investor clients relocated to Long Island during the pandemic, prompting the firm to reduce its office space in Midtown to three floors. It plans to open two new offices on Long Island, including one in Bridgehampton.“For me, this is a no-brainer,” said Richard Rosenbaum, the executive chairman. “We accept that this is likely a permanent change in the way people work.”At the same time, corporate get-togethers are in renewed jeopardy. Mr. Zandi, the Moody’s economist, had two in-person speaking engagements set for September and October, but they were recently turned into remote events.“People are nervous about the variant,” he said. “At the very least, it dents New York’s recovery, and if cases continue to mount, then it will delay the recovery.”The on-again, off-again situation among big companies, as well as for events like weddings and parties, has been destabilizing for businesses that depend on them.Patrick Hall, a co-owner of Elan Flowers in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan, has been dealing with a flurry of changes as clients have grown more skittish about the virus.Soon-to-be brides are cutting their guest lists in half and changing venues at the last minute. One client, who has not yet paid a deposit, had been emailing Mr. Hall about a nonprofit organization’s gala in October for 300 people and recently went silent.Some large companies had asked Mr. Hall to prepare flowers for return-to-office parties in the fall, but Mr. Hall wonders whether he can bank on those. He had planned to expand his staff of seven people to handle an increase in business in September but is now unsure about how many employees to hire.“I’m trying to hang on and not lose it,” Mr. Hall said. “I need these larger events in September for my business to survive.”New York’s huge travel and leisure industry is also having an uneven recovery.More than any other American city, New York counts on international tourists. So the Biden administration’s decision in late July to continue barring entry to visitors from Europe and several other parts of the world was a blow.“It’s just reinforcing that the recovery isn’t going to happen in a straight line,” said Fred Dixon, the chief executive of NYC & Company, the city’s tourism promotion agency.Having written off the bulk of foreign tourism in August, when New York is usually awash with European vacationers, tourism industry officials fear that the Delta variant could keep visitors away during the crucial holiday season, too.New York’s travel and leisure industry is experiencing an uneven recovery, punctuated by the ups and downs of virus cases.Tourism officials fear that the Delta variant could keep visitors away during the usually bustling holiday season.Domestic travelers have returned to New York in rising numbers, Mr. Dixon said — foot traffic in Times Square has been above 200,000 a day, higher than in May and June — but they do not stay as long or spend as much as overseas tourists.At the Loews Regency, a Park Avenue hotel known as a gathering spot for local power brokers and tourists alike, occupancy has been around 75 percent, according to Jonathan M. Tisch, the chief executive of Loews Hotels. But getting to the full-occupancy levels of late 2019 and early 2020, he said, would require a return of business travelers and especially international tourists.“If you could tell me the impact of the Delta variant, I could tell you the occupancy for the rest of the year,” Mr. Tisch said. “It’s a great unknown.”The Javits Convention Center was preparing to host its first trade show in more than a year when the organizers of the New York International Auto Show said in early August they were calling off their 10-day event there. A week later, the Specialty Food Association announced that its annual Fancy Food Show, scheduled for late September at Javits, would not take place.“Given the current significant national upswing in Covid-19 cases due to the Delta variant, we believe that holding a large indoor event and protecting the general safety of all show participants will be nearly impossible,” the food show’s organizers said.New York City’s largest hotel, the 2,000-room Hilton in Midtown, began taking reservations with a plan to reopen in August. But the hotel’s managers canceled those bookings and tentatively reset the reopening for Sept. 1.Still, some businesses have plowed ahead. Genting Group, a Malaysian operator of casinos, opened a 400-room Hyatt Regency hotel at its Resorts World gambling parlor near Kennedy International Airport in early August.After spending $400 million and three years getting the hotel built, the company did not want to wait any longer to open it, said Bob DeSalvio, the president of Genting Americas East.“We understand that it’s going to take a while for travel to fully ramp back up,” he said, so the hotel was staffed for 50 percent occupancy. But there clearly was pent-up demand, because the hotel’s first weekend was sold out, Mr. DeSalvio said.Caroline Hirsch, the owner of Carolines on Broadway, has not canceled any shows at her comedy club and is moving forward with the New York Comedy Festival, which is scheduled to begin on Nov. 8 and feature more than 100 shows across the city.But this month, she noticed for the first time since reopening in May that some people who bought tickets for the club did not show up.“We were off to a great start,” Ms. Hirsch said. “We thought we were going to be over this hump. Now there’s another hump. We’re all up in the air again.”Ms. Hirsch hopes that the city’s new executive order requiring proof of at least one vaccination to enter many indoor establishments will make audience members more comfortable. The mandate went into effect on Tuesday, and on Sept. 13 the city will begin fining businesses that fail to comply.Other business owners are less sanguine about the mandate; it has produced at least one legal challenge. And as September approaches, the prospect of business as usual, which seemed tantalizingly close a few months ago, is proving elusive.At the Shambhala Yoga & Dance Center in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, a wave of students signed up after in-person classes resumed in late April, when vaccination efforts were in full swing. But in recent days, attendance has ebbed and flowed with news of the Delta variant’s outbreak, said Deanna Green, Shambhala’s owner.“Once we saw uncertainty around the vaccines and the Delta variant, I have noticed a little bit of a lull,” Ms. Green said. Some yoga classes that typically had 10 students dropped last week to six or seven, she said.“We’re really dependent on a steady flow of people coming through the doors,” she said. “I wish there was more of a level of certainty.”Eduardo Porter More