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    Biden Defends Unemployment Benefits, Provided Workers Accept Job Offers

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    The president’s comments and a raft of policy announcements were a pushback to Republican criticism of his economic plan after a disappointing jobs report on Friday.WASHINGTON — President Biden ordered the Labor Department on Monday to ensure that unemployed Americans cannot draw enhanced federal jobless benefits if they turn down a suitable job offer, even as he rejected claims by Republicans that his weekly unemployment bonus is undermining efforts to get millions of Americans back to work.Stung from a weekend of criticism over a disappointing April jobs report, Mr. Biden struck a defiant tone, seeking to make clear that he expects workers to return to jobs if they are available, while defending his signature economic policy effort thus far and blaming corporate America, in part, for not doing more to entice people to go back to work.The president told reporters at the White House that child care constraints, school closures and fears of contracting the coronavirus had hindered job creation last month, and he challenged companies to help workers gain access to vaccines and to raise their pay.“The last Congress, before I became president, gave businesses over $1.4 trillion in Covid relief,” Mr. Biden said. “Congress may have approved that money, but let’s be clear: The money came from the American people, and it went from the American people to American businesses, many of them big businesses, to help them get through this pandemic and keep their doors open.”He added, “My expectation is that, as our economy comes back, these companies will provide fair wages and safe work environments.” He said that if they did, “they’ll find plenty of workers, and we’re all going to come out of this together better than before.”Mr. Biden also promised more relief was working its way into the economy through measures created by the $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” that the president signed into law in March. That includes help for child care providers and aid for state and local governments that Treasury Department officials began to make available on Monday.His defense of the stimulus funds and his administration’s handling of the economy comes as Mr. Biden is trying to win support for even more federal spending, including a $2.3 trillion jobs proposal centered on physical infrastructure.Republicans have already criticized Mr. Biden for the disappointing jobs numbers and have suggested he is wreaking havoc with the economic recovery. In particular, they blamed a provision in his rescue plan that extended a $300-per-week federal supplement for unemployed Americans. They say those benefits are depressing hiring by discouraging Americans from returning to work.An aide to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, emailed reporters on Monday, accusing Mr. Biden of placing “handcuffs” on the recovery by extending the jobless benefits.Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, said on Monday that Mr. Biden was “all over the place” on the issue.“He wants to go after folks who are gaming the system, but he’s denying the reality that his policies are making the situation worse, so he’s trying to make struggling businesses the boogeymen,” Mr. Sasse said in a news release. “Here’s the deal: Bad federal policy is making unemployment pay more than work, and millions of jobs aren’t getting filled.”Mr. Biden said on Monday that his administration would make clear that any worker who turned down a suitable job offer, with rare exceptions for health fears related to the virus, would lose access to unemployment benefits.To ensure those rules are being followed, the Labor Department will work with states to reinstate work search requirements. Those rules, which require that anyone collecting unemployment benefits provide proof that they are actively searching for work, were suspended during the pandemic.Twenty-nine states have already reinstated them, and the Labor Department will “work with the remaining states, as health and safety conditions allow, to put in place appropriate work search requirements as the economy continues to rebound, vaccinations increase, and the pandemic is brought under control,” White House officials said in a fact sheet.The president also pointed to new guidance issued Monday by the Treasury Department that will help state, local and tribal governments gain access to more than $350 billion in relief funds made available by the American Rescue Plan. He said that money would help speed hiring and economic growth.“With this funding, communities hit hard by Covid-19 will able to return to a semblance of normalcy,” the Treasury secretary, Janet L. Yellen, said in a statement on Monday on the relief funds.Erin Scott for The New York TimesThe details of how the Treasury Department will disburse those funds, which can be spent on pandemic-related costs, have been eagerly awaited by states, cities, territories and tribal governments that are expected to receive money. But several Republican-led states and the Biden administration are in a legal confrontation over whether states can cut taxes after taking relief money and using it to solidify their budgets.A fact sheet accompanying the announcement about the distribution on Monday made clear that the relief money could not be used to subsidize tax cuts directly or indirectly, which could discourage some states from accepting funds.“The American Rescue Plan ensures that funds needed to provide vital services and support public employees, small businesses and families struggling to make it through the pandemic are not used to fund reductions in net tax revenue,” the Treasury Department said. “If the funds provided have been used to offset tax cuts, the amount used for this purpose must be paid back to the Treasury.”The Treasury Department also issued detailed guidance to states explaining how it would determine if the money was being used properly and in which cases the relief funds could be recouped. If a state does cut taxes, it will have to demonstrate to the Treasury Department that it offset that lost revenue with spending cuts or another source of revenue that does not include the fiscal recovery funds. If the state cannot do that, the department can claw back that amount of money.“This process ensures fiscal recovery funds are used in a manner consistent with the statute’s defined eligible uses and the offset provision’s limitation on these eligible uses, while avoiding undue interference with state and territory decisions regarding tax and spending policies,” the guidance said.Treasury and White House officials made clear that they would scrutinize how the funds were being used to ensure that state budgets were not being gamed to violate the intent of the law. A new recovery office at the Treasury Department will coordinate with states to help determine if their policies are in line with conditions set forth in the law.The relief money also cannot be paid into state pension funds to reduce unfunded liabilities.A White House official would not comment on whether initiatives like Montana’s return-to-work bonuses could be funded using relief money. States and cities are being given broad discretion on how they can use the money, which is intended to replace public sector revenue that was lost during the pandemic; to provide extra pay for essential workers; and to be invested in sewer, water and broadband infrastructure.The Treasury Department’s directive is unlikely to put the legal fight over whether states can cut taxes to rest. Mark Brnovich, the attorney general of Arizona, which is suing the Biden administration, said that Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen’s guidance failed to clarify the matter.“Arizona should not be put in a position of losing billions of dollars because the federal government wants to commandeer states’ tax policies,” Mr. Brnovich said.The allocation of the funds is also likely to be a contentious matter as the money starts to flow. Some states have complained that states that managed the pandemic well are essentially being penalized because the formula for awarding aid is based on state unemployment rates.The Treasury Department said on Monday that the states that were hardest hit economically by the pandemic would also get their money faster.Local governments will generally receive half of the money this month and the rest next year. But states that currently have a net increase in unemployment of more than two percentage points since February 2020 will get the funds in a lump sum right away.Officials also said Monday that the administration would issue new guidelines meant to speed money from the recovery act to help child care centers reopen, and that the Labor Department would highlight a program that allows some unemployed workers to accept offers of part-time jobs without losing access to the federally supplemented benefits.Mr. Biden said that the efforts would help the economy recover — and that the rebound from recession remained on track.“Let’s be clear: Our economic plan is working,” he said. But he said recovery would not always prove to be easy or even. “Some months will exceed expectations,” he said, “others will fall short.” More

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    China's Sinopharm Vaccine Approved for Emergency Use By W.H.O.

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    The World Health Organization has approved a Chinese vaccine for emergency use. The announcement comes at a time when officials in the country are warning of a domestic shortage.Developing countries racing for coronavirus vaccines now have another dependable option — and China’s reputation as a rising scientific superpower just got a big boost.The World Health Organization on Friday declared a vaccine made by a Chinese company, Sinopharm, as a safe and reliable way to fight the virus. The declaration marks a significant step toward clearing up doubts about the vaccine, after little late-phase clinical trial data was disclosed by the Chinese government and the company.The W.H.O. emergency use approval allows the Sinopharm vaccine to be included in Covax, a global initiative to provide free vaccines to poor countries. The possible inclusion in Covax raises hopes that more people — especially those in developing nations — will get access to shots at a crucial moment.Rich countries are hoarding doses of vaccines. India, a major vaccine maker, has stopped exports to address its worsening coronavirus crisis. Safety concerns led health authorities in some countries to temporarily pause the use of vaccines made by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.“The addition of this vaccine has the potential to rapidly accelerate Covid-19 vaccine access for countries seeking to protect health workers and populations at risk,” Dr. Mariângela Simão, W.H.O. assistant director general for access to health products, said in a statement.Reliable vaccine access could improve even further next week when the W.H.O. considers another Chinese shot, made by a company called Sinovac. But the fanfare may be short-lived. While China has claimed it can make up to five billion doses by the end of this year, Chinese officials say the country is struggling to manufacture enough doses for its own population and are cautioning a pandemic-weary world to keep expectations in check.“This should be the golden time for China to practice its vaccine diplomacy. The problem is, at the same time, China itself is facing a shortage,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. “So in terms of global access to vaccines, I don’t expect the situation to significantly improve in the coming two to three months.”A Sinopharm shipment headed to Cameroon. The W.H.O. approval allows the Sinopharm vaccine to be included in Covax, the global initiative to provide vaccines to poor countries. Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA, via ShutterstockChina’s vaccination campaign got off to a slow start, in part because the government prioritized exports and residents did not feel rushed to get vaccinated. The country is now speeding up its national vaccination campaign and aims to inoculate 40 percent of its 1.4 billion people by the end of June.Sinopharm and Sinovac are producing about 12 million doses a day, just a little over the 10 million doses that China hopes to administer daily to meet the domestic target. The companies would have to produce roughly 500 million additional doses to meet the demands of other countries, according to a calculation of data provided by Bridge Consulting, a Beijing-based consultancy focused on China’s impact on global health.The vaccine shortage in China underscores the complexity of rolling out a mass vaccination campaign for the world’s most populous nation while also trying to execute an ambitious export program. Companies involved in the vaccine supply chain, such as those making syringes, are working overtime.“The whole world is short of this vaccine,” said a Sinovac spokesman, Pearson Liu. “The demand is just too great.”To mitigate the shortfall, Chinese officials said those getting vaccinated in China could delay getting their second shot by as long as eight weeks, or they could combine the same type of vaccine from different companies. They have said the shortage should ease by June.Andrea Taylor, who analyzes global data on vaccines at the Duke Global Health Institute, called the potential addition of two Chinese vaccines into the Covax program a “game changer.”“The situation right now is just so desperate for low and lower middle income countries that any doses we can get out are worth mobilizing,” Ms. Taylor said. “Having potentially two options coming from China could really change the landscape of what’s possible over the next few months.”China’s vaccines have been rolled out to more than 80 countries, but they have faced significant skepticism, in part because the companies have not released Phase 3 clinical trial data for scientists to independently assess the vaccines’ efficacy rates. An advisory group to the W.H.O. published the data this week.The Sinopharm vaccine developed with the Beijing Institute of Biological Products has an efficacy rate of 78.1 percent, according to the W.H.O. advisory group. The Sinovac vaccine has varying efficacy rates of between 50 percent to 84 percent, depending on the country where Phase 3 trials were conducted. Both vaccines were made using a tried-and-tested technology that involves weakening or killing a virus with chemicals.The advisory group’s data showed that it had a “high level of confidence” that the Sinopharm vaccine worked in preventing Covid-19 in adults, but a “low level” of confidence for people over 60. The group’s findings were similar for the Sinovac vaccine.The W.H.O. said that because Sinopharm enrolled few adults above 60 years old in its trials, the health agency could not estimate the vaccine efficacy for this group. But the W.H.O. said it would not restrict the use of the vaccine in that age group because preliminary data suggests “the vaccine is likely to have a protective effect in older persons.”There is limited data on how well the vaccine will work against the many coronavirus variants cropping up around the world. Chinese vaccines are overall less effective than the inoculations produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.But for China’s leaders, the W.H.O. approval can still be seen as a badge of honor. Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, has pledged to make a Covid-19 vaccine a “global public good.”After India announced export restrictions on vaccines last month, Indonesia and the Philippines said they would turn to China for help. Last week, China’s foreign minister offered to help South Asian nations get access to vaccines.Indonesia said it would get additional doses from Sinovac after President Joko Widodo held talks with Mr. Xi. In a speech the same week, President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines said he owed “a debt of gratitude” to China for its vaccines.It remains to be seen whether the W.H.O. approval will change Beijing’s approach to doling out vaccines. China has given only 10 million doses to Covax, though it has independently donated 16.5 million doses and sold 691 million doses to 84 countries, according to Bridge Consulting. Many of the donations were made to developing nations in Africa and Asia.“They don’t like to subsume their generosity in their products under some U.N. brand,” said J. Stephen Morrison, director of the global health policy center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “They are in a historic phase,” he said. “They want the recipients to know that this is China delivering.”Jason Gutierrez More

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    The Jobs Report: The Boom That Wasn’t

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    April’s anemic job creation was so out of line with what other indicators have suggested that it will take some time to unravel the mystery.A restaurant in Greenwich Village in Manhattan. Hiring in the hospitality and leisure sector was robust in April, but job growth over all was surprisingly weak.Mary Altaffer/Associated PressIt’s a little secret of the news business that for some anticipated events, like a Supreme Court decision or the death of a prominent figure, we pre-write much of an article or different versions of them so that we can publish quickly once news occurs.Which is why there is now a trashed draft of this article explaining how the April jobs numbers show what a hyper-speed economic recovery looks like. It was completely wrong.Employers added only 266,000 jobs last month, the government reported Friday morning, not the million or so that forecasters expected. The unemployment rate actually edged up, to 6.1 percent.The details of the new numbers are messy. Temporary employment fell sharply (down 111,000 jobs), while hiring in the leisure and hospitality sector was robust (up 331,000 jobs). It will take time to figure out why so many mainstream forecasts were so wrong — the modest job creation is out of whack with what other indicators have suggested — and whether some part of the weak results is more statistical aberration than reality.But if robust job growth doesn’t return quickly, it will be very concerning. The economy is still short 8.2 million jobs from its February 2020 level. The great hope has been that employers would fill that gap rapidly, bringing the United States back to its full potential in short order.Even if you view April as an outlier, job growth has averaged only 524,000 a month for the last three months, a pace that if continued would imply a long slog back to full health. It certainly does not signal the kind of rapid boom that many forecasters have started to expect, and that the Biden administration and the Federal Reserve are hoping for.These numbers are consistent with the story many business leaders are telling, of severe labor shortages — that demand has surged back but employers cannot find enough workers to fulfill it, at least not at the wages they are accustomed to paying. Many employers and conservatives argue that the expanded federal unemployment benefits have been too generous (they were extended as part of the recent pandemic rescue aid package and are scheduled to expire in September).Citing the jobs report, the Chamber of Commerce on Friday urged an immediate end to the $300 weekly unemployment benefit supplement.April’s slow job growth was accompanied by significant pay increases. Average hourly earnings rose by 0.7 percent, not too shabby on its own. And in certain sectors the pay raises were blockbusters, including a 4.8 percent rise in leisure and hospitality average hourly earnings — in a single month.It’s worth noting that the labor force is growing — an additional 430,000 Americans were either working or looking for work in April — so it’s pretty much the opposite of the situation after the 2008 recession, when wages were growing slowly and millions were leaving the labor force.Still, it remains possible that many people remain reluctant to jump back into work for a variety of other reasons: having to care for children whose classes are remote; fearing the coronavirus; reconsidering their careers.Back in 2010, the Obama administration introduced one of the more unfortunate economic messaging concepts of recent decades, announcing that a “Recovery Summer” was underway. It became a punchline, because while the economy was expanding, Americans were still far worse off than they’d been before the 2008 recession, and improvement was coming very slowly.That’s one outcome the Biden administration desperately wants to avoid. More

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    April 2021 Jobs Report Shows Slowdown in Hiring

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    U.S. employers added 266,000 jobs in April, the government reported Friday, far below what economists had expected and a dramatic slowdown from March’s rapid hiring pace.The jobless rate rose slightly to 6.1 percent.Economists had forecast an addition of about a million jobs.The increase for March was revised down to 770,000 from 916,000.Still, more opportunities are bubbling up as coronavirus infections ebb, vaccinations spread, restrictions lift and businesses reopen. Job postings on the online job site Indeed are 24 percent higher than they were in February last year.“There’s been a broad-base pickup in demand,” said Nick Bunker, who leads North American economic research at the Indeed Hiring Lab. The supercharged housing market is driving demand for construction workers. There is also an abundance of loading, stocking and other warehousing jobs — a side-effect of the boom in e-commerce.The economy still has a lot of ground to regain before returning to prepandemic levels. Millions of jobs have vanished since February 2020, and the labor force has shrunk.As the economy fitfully recovers, there are divergent accounts of what’s going on in the labor market. Employers, particularly in the restaurant and hospitality industry, have reported scant response to help-wanted ads. Several have blamed what they call overly generous government jobless benefits, including a temporary $300-a-week federal stipend that was part of an emergency pandemic relief program.But the most solid evidence of a real shortage of workers, economists say, is rising wages. And that is not happening in a sustained way.As Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, said at a news conference last week: “We don’t see wages moving up yet. And presumably we would see that in a really tight labor market.”Millions of Americans have said that health concerns and child care responsibilities — with many schools and day care centers not back to normal operations — have prevented them from returning to work. Millions of others who are not actively job hunting are considered on temporary layoff and expect to be hired back by their previous employers once more businesses reopen fully. At the same time, some baby boomers have retired or switched to working part time. More

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    Health Advocate or Big Brother? Companies Weigh Requiring Vaccines.

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    It is a delicate decision balancing employee health and personal privacy. Some companies are sidestepping the issue by offering incentives to those who get shots.As American companies prepare to bring large numbers of workers back to the office in the coming months, executives are facing one of their most delicate pandemic-related decisions: Should they require employees to be vaccinated?Take the case of United Airlines. In January, the chief executive, Scott Kirby, indicated at a company town hall that he wanted to require all of his roughly 96,000 employees to get coronavirus vaccines once they became widely available.“I think it’s the right thing to do,” Mr. Kirby said, before urging other corporations to follow suit. It has been four months. No major airlines have made a similar pledge — and United Airlines is waffling.“It’s still something we are considering, but no final decisions have been made,” a spokeswoman, Leslie Scott, said.For the country’s largest companies, mandatory vaccinations would protect service workers and lower the anxiety for returning office employees. That includes those who have been vaccinated but may be reluctant to return without knowing whether their colleagues have as well. And there is a public service element: The goal of herd immunity has slipped as the pace of vaccinations has slowed.But making vaccinations mandatory could risk a backlash, and perhaps even litigation, from those who view it as an invasion of privacy and a Big Brother-like move to control the lives of employees.A United Airlines vaccine clinic at O’Hare Airport in Chicago. Employers are using on-site vaccinations to encourage workers to get shots.Scott Olson/Getty ImagesIn polls, executives show a willingness to require vaccinations. In a survey of 1,339 employers conducted by Arizona State University’s College of Health Solutions and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, 44 percent of U.S. respondents said they planned to mandate vaccinations for their companies. In a separate poll of 446 employers conducted by Willis Towers Watson, a risk-management firm, 23 percent of respondents said they were “planning or considering requiring employees to get vaccinated for them to return to the worksite.”That discrepancy, said Mara Aspinall, who led the Arizona State poll, may have to do with the timing of the surveys and the pace at which executives are growing comfortable with the vaccines. Arizona State conducted its survey in March, while Willis Towers led its survey between Feb. 23 and March 12.Despite what surveys have found, few executives have taken the step of mandating vaccines. It seems that most are hoping that encouragement, whether forceful or subtle, will be enough.“While legally in the United States, employers can mandate vaccines while providing accommodations for religious and for health reasons, socially, in terms of the social acceptability of these decisions, it’s much more tenuous,” said Laura Boudreau, a professor of public policy at Columbia University. “And so the reputational risks to these companies of getting this wrong are really high.”Douglas Brayley, an employment lawyer at the global law firm Ropes & Gray, warns clients of the implications of following through on a mandate, he said.“What if 10 percent of your work force refuses? Are you prepared to lay off that 10 percent?” he said he asked clients. “Or what if it’s someone high-level or in a key role, would you be prepared to impose consequences? And then they sometimes get more nervous.”He added, “Anytime you would have them putting out a mandate, but then carrying through the consequences unevenly, that would create a risk of potentially unlawful unfair treatment.”Companies that require vaccines may also be concerned about any side effects or medical issues that an employee might claim were caused by the vaccine.“They could be held liable for any sort of adverse effects that might happen a year or two down the road,” said Karl Minges, chair of health administration and policy at the University of New Haven.Some companies are sidestepping the problem and trying incentives instead. Amtrak is paying employees two hours’ worth of regular wages per shot upon proof of vaccination. Darden, which owns Olive Garden and other restaurants, told employees it would offer hourly employees two hours of pay for each dose they receive, while emphasizing it would not make doses mandatory. Target is offering a $5 coupon to all customers and employees who receive their vaccination at a CVS at Target location.For restaurants, making vaccinations mandatory could make hiring workers even more difficult.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesIn the United States, there’s nothing new about vaccines being required for participation in public life. The Supreme Court ruled about a century ago that states could require vaccinations for children attending public school. And universities like Rutgers have instituted mandatory Covid-19 vaccinations.But the pandemic brings up a host of complications that companies typically prefer to avoid, involving the private lives, religious preferences and medical histories of employees, such as whether an employee is pregnant, breastfeeding or immuno-compromised, information they may not want to reveal.Major union groups, like the A.F.L.-C.I.O., have not aggressively pushed the issue either. They are facing dueling forces — standing up for individual worker’s rights on the one hand and protecting one another on the other. Unions have also been arguing for stronger workplace safety measures, efforts that could be complicated by companies’ arguing that mandatory vaccinations reduce the need for such accommodations. The return to work protocols negotiated between the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers and Hollywood’s unions, for instance, will not include mandatory vaccinations.“There are going to be some people who may have legitimate reasons for not getting the vaccine or for not wanting to talk about it,” said Carrie Altieri, who works in communications for IBM’s People and Culture business. “It’s not an easy issue at this point.” IBM is working with New York State on a digital passport linking a person’s vaccination records to an app to show businesses, like performance venues, that may require vaccination. It is not, though, requiring vaccinations for its employees.For some businesses like restaurants, which are already struggling to hire workers, mandating vaccinations could make hiring even more difficult. And there are questions of logistics and execution. How can companies confirm the veracity of those who say they’ve been vaccinated?Companies may need to hire additional staff, potentially with medical training, to handle such tasks, which could saddle businesses — particularly small ones — with burdensome costs.Vivint, a home security company based in Utah with 10,000 employees, began offering vaccines in its on-site clinic this week, after the state approved the company to distribute 100 shots a week to its staff. It paid $3,000 for the necessary medical-grade freezer.“We’re not requiring employees to get vaccinated, but we’re highly encouraging it,” said Starr Fowler, senior vice president for human resources. “For a lot of our employees, particularly those that are younger, the easier that we make it for them, the more likely they’re going to do it.”At Salesforce Tower park in San Francisco, up to 100 fully vaccinated employees can volunteer to work on designated floors.Jason Henry for The New York TimesOthers are experimenting with splitting up their work forces. Salesforce is introducing a policy in certain U.S. offices, including Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, where up to 100 fully vaccinated employees can volunteer to work on designated floors. The New York Stock Exchange issued a memo to trading firms saying they would be allowed to increase their staff on the floor, provided all the employees have been vaccinated.The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued guidance in December stating that employers were indeed legally permitted to require employees to be vaccinated before they return to offices. But the threat of litigation still looms.“To be concerned about the possibility of litigation seems to me to be a perfectly legitimate concern,” said Eric Feldman, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He added, “It would seem to me that employers are going to find themselves in a fairly strong position legally — but that doesn’t mean they’re not going to get sued.”Legislation that would limit the ability to require vaccines for students, employees or the public in general has been proposed in at least 25 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Some of those restrictions pertain only to vaccines that, like those for Covid-19, have yet to be granted full approval by the Food and Drug Administration. (The coronavirus vaccines have been granted conditional approval for emergency use.)Pfizer is expected to file for full approval of its Covid-19 vaccine soon. Others are expected to follow.Speaking at a Wall Street Journal conference this week, Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, mentioned “legal issues about requiring vaccines” when asked about bringing workers back to the office. A press officer for the bank, which plans to open its offices on May 17 on a voluntary basis, said it strongly encouraged vaccines for employees — barring any religious or health restrictions — but would not require them. A spokeswoman for Goldman Sachs, which has not guided employees either way, declined to comment.One potential path for companies seeking a middle ground is to mandate the shots only for new hires. Still, there is a fine line between encouraging and requiring shots — sometimes resulting in conflicting messages to employees.The investment bank Jefferies sent a memo to employees in early February stating “verification of vaccination will be required to access the office.” On Feb. 24 came a follow-up memo. “We did not intend to make it sound as if we are mandating vaccines,” it said.Reporting was contributed by More

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    New state unemployment claims fall sharply.

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    Unemployment filings fell again last week as the improving public health situation and the easing of pandemic-related restrictions allowed the labor market to continue its gradual return to normal.About 505,000 people filed first-time applications for state jobless benefits, the Labor Department said Thursday, down more than 100,000 from a week earlier. In addition, 101,000 people filed for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federal program covering freelancers, self-employed workers and others who don’t qualify for regular benefits. Neither figure is seasonally adjusted.Applications for unemployment benefits remain high by historical standards, but they have fallen significantly in recent weeks after progress stalled in the fall and winter. Weekly filings for state benefits, which peaked at more than six million last spring, fell below 700,000 for the first time in late March and have now been below that level for four straight weeks.“In the last few weeks we’ve seen a pretty dramatic improvement in the claims data, and I think that does signal that there’s been an acceleration in the labor market recovery in April,” said Daniel Zhao, senior economist at the employment site Glassdoor.There were still more than nine million people receiving unemployment insurance under state programs — or emergency programs that extend state benefits — as of mid-April, the latest data available. That total, which does not include workers on Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, has fallen in recent weeks but has done so more slowly than new applications. At the peak of the crisis last spring, more than 20 million people were receiving benefits.Economists should get a clearer picture of the labor market’s progress on Friday, when the Labor Department will release data on hiring and unemployment in April. The report is expected to show that employers added about one million jobs last month, up from 916,000 in March. The leisure and hospitality industry, which was hit the hardest by the initial phase of the pandemic last spring, has led the way in the recovery in recent months, a trend that forecasters believe continued in April.Even strong job growth last month will still leave the U.S. economy with millions fewer jobs than before the pandemic. Forecasters expect the report to show that the unemployment rate fell below 6 percent in April, down from nearly 15 percent last spring. But that doesn’t factor in people — particularly women — who have left the labor force, including those caring for children while schools are closed. If those people were counted as unemployed, the jobless rate would have been above 9 percent in March and most likely close to that level in April.Many employers have said in recent weeks that they would like to hire even faster but have struggled to find enough workers. Some have blamed enhanced unemployment benefits for discouraging people from returning to work. On Tuesday, Gov. Greg Gianforte of Montana said his state would pull out of a federal program offering enhanced benefits to unemployed workers and would instead pay a $1,200 bonus to recipients when they found new jobs.Economic research has found that unemployment benefits can reduce the intensity with which workers search for jobs. But most studies find that the impact on the overall labor market is small, especially when unemployment is high. And Mr. Zhao and other economists say there are other reasons that labor supply might be rebounding more slowly than demand. Many potential workers are juggling child care or other responsibilities at home; others remain cautious about the health risks of returning to in-person work.“I think we will see labor supply improve pretty dramatically in the coming months as the pandemic abates,” Mr. Zhao said. More

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    Covid and Travel: Why an Estimated 100,000 Americans Abroad Face Passport Problems

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    Consular appointments for U.S. citizens overseas are nearly impossible to come by as many embassies, plagued by Covid restrictions and staff reductions, remain all but closed. Yona Shemesh, 24, was born in Los Angeles, but he moved to Israel with his family at age 9. In July 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic was raging, he booked a ticket to Los Angeles to visit his grandparents in June 2021, knowing that he would have nearly an entire year to renew his American passport, which had long since expired.Eight months later, he was still trying to get an appointment at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem to do just that.About 9 million U.S. citizens currently live abroad, and as the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel finally appears, immigration lawyers estimate more than 100,000 can’t get travel documents to return to the United States.Despite the State Department making headway on a massive backlog of passport applications in the early months of the pandemic, many consulates and embassies abroad, plagued by Covid-19 restrictions and staffing reductions, remain closed for all but emergency services. Travel is restarting, but for American expats who had a baby abroad in the past year or saw their passport expire during the pandemic, elusive appointments for documents are keeping them grounded.“It’s a real mess,” said Jennifer Minear, an immigration attorney and the president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “It’s a giant, multilayered onion of a problem and the reduction of staff as a result of Covid at the consular posts has really thrown the State Department for a loop.”Michael Wildes, the managing partner of the law firm Wildes & Weinberg, P.C., which specializes in immigration law, estimates that the number of stranded Americans abroad is in the hundreds of thousands.“Our offices have been inundated,” he said. “We’ve been getting at least 1,200 calls a week on this, which is about 50 percent more than last year. The problem is more robust than people realize, and this isn’t how a 21st-century society should work.”Ballooning backlog, endless delaysIn Israel alone, the U.S. Embassy has a passport backlog of 15,000 applications, according to The Jerusalem Post. American Citizens Abroad, an advocacy organization for U.S. expats, sent an official request to the State Department in October 2020 to prioritize Americans’ access to consular services abroad, “but people are still experiencing delays,” said the organization’s executive director, Marylouise Serrato.In Mexico, which is believed to have more American expats than any other country, a recent search on the appointment database for the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City showed zero available appointments for passport services, even with emergency circumstances (appointments from July onward have not yet been released).At the U.S. Embassy in London, the availability of appointments for both in-person passport renewals and obtaining an official record of a child’s claim to U.S. citizenship, known as a Consular Report of Birth Abroad, plummeted when Britain went back into lockdown last fall. Amanda Brill, a London-based U.S. immigration attorney, said that since November, appointments have been nonexistent for both. “You can imagine that if you’re a U.S. citizen and you’ve had a baby in the past six months, it is frustrating at best and incredibly stressful for citizens returning to America,” she said.And as of early April, 75 percent of U.S. consulates abroad remained at least partially closed. The State Department will not release numbers on how many Americans are awaiting passport appointments around the world, but the size of the backlog for interviews for approved U.S. immigration visas — which are also handled by the State Department and have been affected by the same slowdown — gives a sense of the challenge. In January 2020, there was a backlog of 75,000 immigrant visas for those wishing to come to the United States; as of February 2021, the backlog had ballooned to 473,000.Vicious mix of politics and the pandemicState Department officials would not offer specifics on wait times for appointments and passport services at their embassies, but they said in a statement that Americans should expect delays when applying for nonemergency passport or citizenship services, and that operating hours vary significantly between embassies, as each is facing different Covid-19 restrictions.Stateside, adult U.S. citizens can renew an expired passport by mail, a process which is currently taking 10 to 12 weeks, according to State Department officials. But in many countries abroad, citizens must apply at a U.S. embassy or consulate for the same service. Even in the countries where U.S. passport renewals are available by mail, travel documents for minors or for those whose passports expired before the age of 18 still need to be requested in person.The situation, said the immigration attorney Jessica Smith Bobadilla, was created by a vicious mix of politics and the pandemic. “The combination of Trump-era travel bans and the Covid-19 restrictions still in place seriously impacted the visa and passport-processing time frames and procedures by the Department of State like never before in recent history,” Ms. Bobadilla said.Appointments for saleMr. Shemesh, the dual citizen living in Israel, spent months logging onto the U.S. Embassy’s website daily at 10 a.m., which he heard on Facebook was the moment that appointments were released each day, to try to grab one. He repeatedly walked the two blocks from his Jerusalem apartment to the U.S. Embassy to ask the guards if they knew of any openings, and he sent multiple emails to consular officials. Everyone told him he simply needed to wait. Finally, with the deadline for his trip looming, he heard about a third-party broker in Israel who promised he could book him an appointment within weeks in exchange for $450.The State Department prohibits such practices, but the issue of bootleggers selling access to U.S. embassies is widespread enough that on Jan. 14, the Bureau of Consular Affairs issued a notice to registered passport courier companies warning them of consequences for pay-to-play offerings for appointments. David Alwadish, the founder of ItsEasy Passport & Visa, a passport-and-visa-expediting service, said that many of them are so small that they’re nearly impossible to track.“Since there is an online appointment system, anybody can log on, stockpile these appointments and resell them,” he said. “In the United States, they can be sold for $200 or $250, but out of the country they can charge much more.”Mr. Shemesh got the broker’s phone number and transferred the money, and in one day, he had a confirmed appointment.“I tried for eight months to get an appointment, and it was really a bummer because my money is something I have to work hard for. I paid more to renew my passport than I did on the ticket to Los Angeles. It felt like blackmail.”Desperate Americans in other countries have considered paying for other services, as well.Conner Gorry, an American journalist who lives in Cuba, tried for weeks to renew her expiring U.S. passport and considered chartering a plane from Havana to Miami where she could renew her passport by mail.Jenn Ackerman for The New York TimesConner Gorry, 51, an American journalist who lives in Cuba, spent several frantic weeks trying to renew her expiring passport earlier this year. The U.S. Embassy in Havana is closed for all but emergency services. For six weeks, she tried to book an appointment, and received no response. Ms. Gorry grew so stressed that she developed gastritis, and at one point, she contemplated spending more than $13,000 to charter a plane from Havana to Miami, where she knew she would be able to renew her passport by mail.She eventually found a flight out of Havana, and flew to the U.S. with one week left on her passport. She is unsure of when she will return to Cuba. The situation, she said, made her furious.“The Covid thing is one thing. But the U.S. has citizens all over the world, and a diplomatic corps all over the world. What are they doing to protect and attend to us?”Dayna and Brian Lee, originally from Toronto, turned to an immigration lawyer when they could not book U.S. passport appointments for their infant twins born in New York City.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesDocuments for American citizens within the United States are also getting stuck in the backlog. When Dayna and Brian Lee, who are Tony Award-winning producers of “Angels in America,” had twin baby girls in early April, the bureaucratic headaches started before they even brought their newborn daughters from the hospital to their home in New York City, where they have lived for several years.The couple is originally from Toronto and their daughters, Emmy and Ella, are eligible for dual U.S. and Canadian citizenship but are currently without passports from either country. The infants must have American passports first so their parents can travel with them to Canada, where the girls will be able to also receive their Canadian passports. But for weeks after the girls were born, Mr. and Mrs. Lee were unable to book appointments at any U.S. passport office within a three-hour drive of New York City. They ended up turning to an immigration lawyer for help.“It’s so inexplicably stressful, mixed up with the overwhelming joy of having these two beautiful lives in front of you,” Mr. Lee said. “But we’ve made the decision that come hell or high water, we will be with our families this summer.”Elizabeth Goss, an immigration attorney based in Boston, said she expects delays and scheduling headaches for both visas and U.S. passports to last another year.“It’s like a cruise ship that needs to readjust,” she said. “It’s not a speedboat.”Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places list for 2021. More

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    Restaurants and Bars Rush to Apply for New Federal Aid Program

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    The industry’s return will serve as a major test of President Biden’s goal of bringing the country back to some version of normal by this summer.WASHINGTON — A total of 186,200 restaurants, bars and other eligible businesses applied for help from a new $28.6 billion federal aid program in the first two days it was accepting applications, President Biden said on Wednesday, indicating huge demand from a struggling industry for a limited pot of relief funds.The Restaurant Revitalization Fund was created by Congress as part of the $1.9 trillion relief bill passed in March and began accepting applications online on Monday.“That’s a staggering number,” Mr. Biden said of the opening flood of applications that came in from all 50 states. Business owners who were hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic can apply for grants of up to $10 million.The return of the restaurant industry will serve as a major test of Mr. Biden’s goal of bringing the country back to some version of normal by this summer, both for 2.3 million people whose restaurant jobs disappeared during the pandemic and for vaccinated Americans eager to take advantage of newfound freedoms to go out and socialize again.“Right now, only about a quarter of the restaurant owners expect to return to normal operations in the next six months,” Mr. Biden said. “We can do much better than that.”Few sectors of the economy suffered the financial blow of the coronavirus pandemic last year as much as the restaurant industry, which saw business plummet with the shuttering of indoor dining in many states and closures of higher-priced restaurants that were not able to easily shift to takeout options. More than 110,000 restaurants and bars temporarily or permanently closed last year, according to the National Restaurant Association.Mr. Biden’s aid plan for restaurants, while limited, is more robust than what has been available to them in the past. Restaurants were not included in the coronavirus relief package that former President Donald J. Trump signed into law last December. Mr. Trump had been dismissive of the jobs lost, while expressing optimism about the fate of the industry overall.“It may not be the same restaurant, it may not be the same ownership, but they’ll all be back,” Mr. Trump told reporters last year during a news conference.On Wednesday, Mr. Biden described restaurants as important foundations of their communities and gateways to opportunities that were “more than a major part of our country.”“They’re woven into the fabric of our communities,” the president added.He described the battered industry as one of the best paths for many people to achieve the American dream. “One in three Americans, a restaurant provided their first job,” Mr. Biden said. “More than half of all Americans have worked in a restaurant at some point in their lives.”But for now, the relief the administration is offering falls far short of what is necessary to stabilize the decimated industry.A group of owners of small food businesses who lobbied for the funds have contended that $120 billion is needed to stabilize independent restaurants. And Mr. Biden said on Wednesday that he expected the current fund to be able to help about 100,000 restaurants and other eligible businesses — fewer than those that already applied in the first 48 hours of the website being operational.“We know that the $28.6 billion is not enough to meet the demand,” Isabella Casillas Guzman, the small business administrator, said last week. “However, we need to demonstrate that demand, and we need to encourage everyone to apply and access this fund as much as possible and demonstrate what remaining need is out there.”For the first 21 days, the Small Business Administration will approve claims only from businesses that are majority-owned by women, veterans or people who qualify as both socially and economically disadvantaged.Mr. Biden said 97,600 of the applications received in the program’s first two days had come from businesses owned by people who fell into those categories. High demand for the funds, however, was not necessarily a good thing for a program that has limited funding and will have to turn many needy businesses away.The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said the administration would be open to seeking more funding from Congress, but she offered no specifics. Mr. Biden said the high demand should prove to skeptics that the program was a necessity.“We passed the American Rescue Plan,” he said. “Some people said it wasn’t needed. This response proves them wrong. It’s badly needed.”Before his remarks at the White House, Mr. Biden purchased tacos and enchiladas from Taqueria Las Gemelas, a Mexican restaurant in Washington that was a beneficiary of the relief fund’s pilot program. The restaurant went from 55 employees before the pandemic to just seven, Mr. Biden said.The program has yet to distribute any money to restaurants outside of the limited pilot, but officials said they hoped to get funds out the door quickly. More