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    Did You Miss Out on Vacation This Year? You’re Not Alone

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Stimulus PlanVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineCredit…Jackson GibbsSkip to contentSkip to site indexDid You Miss Out on Vacation This Year? You’re Not AloneEmployers are struggling to deal with the unused days that have piled up during the pandemic.Credit…Jackson GibbsSupported byContinue reading the main storyDec. 28, 2020Updated 6:52 p.m. ETIn a typical year, New York employees of the magazine publisher Condé Nast must use their vacation days before late December or lose them — a common policy across corporate America.But early this month, the company sent employees an email saying they could carry up to five vacation days into next year, an apparent acknowledgment that many scrimped on days off amid the long hours and travel restrictions imposed by the pandemic. “The carry-over will be automatic, and there is nothing further you need to do,” the email said.Condé Nast was not alone in scrambling to make end-of-year arrangements for vacation-deprived workers. Some employers, however, have been less accommodating.“It’s a big issue we’re seeing now — competing requests for time off over the next two weeks,” said Allan S. Bloom, an employment lawyer at Proskauer in New York. “Clients are struggling to figure it out.”Mr. Bloom and other lawyers and human resources experts said there was no clear pattern in how employers were handling the challenge.Many companies that already allow employees to carry vacation days into the next year — like Goldman Sachs (generally up to 10) and Spotify (generally up to 10) — have not felt the need to change their policies.The same is true for some companies that pay workers for their unused vacation days.Neither General Motors nor Ford Motor, whose hourly workers can cash out unused vacation days at the end of the year, is making changes this year.But many workers may find themselves unable to take vacations that they postponed: Salaried workers at both automakers ordinarily lose unused vacation days at the end of the year without compensation.Other companies have taken steps that could defuse a potential human resources headache and, they say, benefit their work forces in difficult times.Bank of America, which normally requires its U.S. employees to take all their vacation before the end of the year, said in June that it would allow them to push up to five days into the first quarter of 2021.Citigroup has typically allowed its U.S. employees to carry vacation days into the first quarter of the next year, but in July it added an inducement: Employees receive an extra vacation day next year if they use all of their 2020 vacation time this year.Smaller companies have made similar modifications.Latshaw Drilling, an oil service company based in Tulsa, Okla., typically allows office workers to roll over up to three weeks of vacation time. In December, Latshaw told its office employees that it would buy up to one week of unused time beyond that amount, which they would have otherwise lost.“Since this year was so crazy and people were afraid to travel, we made a one-time change,” said Trent Latshaw, the company’s founder and president.Several experts said a philosophical question loomed over vacation benefits: Is the point to ensure that workers take time off? Or are vacation days simply an alternative form of compensation that workers can use as they see fit, whether to relax away from the job, to supplement their income or to drag around with them until the end of time, as a monument to their productivity?An employer’s policies can reflect its views on this question: For all their drawbacks, use-it-or-lose-it rules can help ensure that workers take time off, said Jackie Reinberg, who heads the absence and disability practice of the consulting firm Willis Towers Watson. By contrast, rollover and cash-out options imply that vacation is an asset they are entitled to control.Credit…Jackson GibbsStill, for many workers, the issue during the pandemic is not unused vacation days so much as insufficient vacation days. Jonathan Williams, communications director for United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400, which represents grocery store workers in Mid-Atlantic States, said workers had sometimes been forced to draw down their reserves of paid time off if they were asked to quarantine a second time after a possible coronavirus exposure. Only the first quarantine is typically covered by the employer, Mr. Williams said.And some employees have difficulty taking advantage of the generous vacation policies their companies offer.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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    New Signs of Economic Distress Emerge as Trump Imperils Aid Deal

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Stimulus DealThe Latest Vaccine InformationF.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyNew Signs of Economic Distress Emerge as Trump Imperils Aid DealA decline in consumer income and spending poses a further challenge to the recovery as jobless claims remain high and benefits approach a cutoff.Food donations were distributed on Saturday in Bloomington, Calif. Economic data released on Wednesday pointed to challenges ahead as the pandemic grinds on.Credit…Alex Welsh for The New York TimesDec. 23, 2020, 5:30 p.m. ETWith the fate of a federal aid package suddenly thrown into doubt by President Trump, economic data on Wednesday showed why the help is so desperately needed.Personal income fell in November for the second straight month, the Commerce Department said Wednesday, and consumer spending declined for the first time since April, as waning government aid and a worsening pandemic continued to take a toll on the U.S. economy.Separate data from the Labor Department showed that applications for unemployment benefits remained high last week and have risen since early November.Taken together, the reports are the latest evidence that the once-promising economic recovery is sputtering.“We know that things are going to get worse,” said Daniel Zhao, senior economist with the career site Glassdoor. “The question is how much worse.”The answer depends heavily on two factors: the path of the pandemic, and the willingness of the federal government to provide help.Congress, after months of delays, acted on Monday, passing a $900 billion economic relief package that would provide aid to the unemployed, small businesses and most households. Most urgently, it would prevent millions from losing jobless benefits at the end of this week.But on Tuesday evening, Mr. Trump demanded sweeping changes in the bill, throwing into doubt whether he would sign it.Mr. Trump’s criticism of the relief effort, which he called a “disgrace,” was that it was not generous enough: He called on Congress to provide $2,000 a person in direct payments to households, rather than the $600 included in the bill.Many economists view direct payments as among the least effective measures in the package, because much of the money would go to households that don’t need it. But beyond the merits of any specific measure, the real risk is that Mr. Trump’s comments could delay the aid, or derail it entirely.The data released Wednesday underscored the economy’s fragility. Personal income fell 1.1 percent in November and is down 3.6 percent since July, as the loss of federal assistance more than offset rising income from wages and salaries.Consumer spending, which proved resilient in the summer and fall, declined 0.4 percent, an ominous sign for small businesses trying to survive the winter. Some of the biggest drops came in categories most exposed to the pandemic’s impact: Spending on restaurants and hotels fell 3.8 percent in November, and spending on transportation, clothing and gasoline also declined.The pullback in spending is spilling over into the labor market. About 869,000 people filed new claims for state jobless benefits last week. That was down from a week earlier but is significantly above the level in early November, before a surge in coronavirus cases prompted a new round of layoffs in much of the country.A further 398,000 people filed for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, one of two federal programs to expand jobless benefits that were set to expire this month without congressional action. Some forecasters expect the December employment report to show a net loss of jobs.“The data just underscores the importance of fiscal support,” said Aneta Markowska, chief financial economist for Jefferies, an investment bank. Without it, she said, “there would be permanent damage, and it would probably be pretty significant.”The relief bill was smaller than many economists said was needed to carry the economy through the pandemic and ensure a robust recovery. It won’t revive the hardest hit industries or undo the damage left by months of lost income for many households.A deserted hotel lobby in Beverly Hills, Calif. Consumer spending fell last month for the first time since April, with Americans cutting back in particular on restaurant meals and hotel stays.Credit…Philip Cheung for The New York TimesBut the package may be enough to forestall the wave of evictions and small-business failures that many economists warn is inevitable without it. And it should be enough to avoid a fall back into recession, which an increasing number of forecasters have said is likely without a quick injection of federal money.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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    The Year the Fed Changed Forever

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Stimulus DealThe Latest Vaccine InformationF.A.Q.Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, has faced some of the most trying months in the central bank’s history.Credit…Nate Palmer for The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site indexThe Year the Fed Changed ForeverJerome H. Powell’s central bank slashed rates, bought bonds in huge sums and rolled out never-before-tried loan programs that shifted its identity. The backlash is already beginning.Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, has faced some of the most trying months in the central bank’s history.Credit…Nate Palmer for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyDec. 23, 2020Updated 4:04 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — As Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, rang in 2020 in Florida, where he was celebrating his son’s wedding, his work life seemed to be entering a period of relative calm. President Trump’s public attacks on the central bank had eased up after 18 months of steady criticism, and the trade war with China seemed to be cooling, brightening the outlook for markets and the economy.Yet the earliest signs of a new — and far more dangerous — crisis were surfacing some 8,000 miles away. The novel coronavirus had been detected in Wuhan, China. Mr. Powell and his colleagues were about to face some of the most trying months in Fed history.By mid-March, as markets were crashing, the Fed had cut interest rates to near zero to protect the economy. By March 23, to avert a full-blown financial crisis, the Fed had rolled out nearly its entire 2008 menu of emergency loan programs, while teaming up with the Treasury Department to announce programs that had never been tried — including plans to support lending to small and medium-size businesses and buy corporate debt. In early April, it tacked on a plan to get credit flowing to states.“We crossed a lot of red lines that had not been crossed before,” Mr. Powell said at an event in May.The Fed’s job in normal times is to help the economy operate at an even keel — to keep prices stable and jobs plentiful. Its sweeping pandemic response pushed its powers into new territory. The central bank restored calm to markets and helped keep credit available to consumers and businesses. It also led Republicans to try to limit the vast tool set of the politically independent and unelected institution. The Fed’s emergency loan programs became a sticking point in the negotiations over the government spending package Congress approved this week.But even amid the backlash, the Fed’s work in salvaging a pandemic-stricken economy remains unfinished, with millions of people out of jobs and businesses suffering.The Fed is likely to keep rates at rock bottom for years, guided by a new approach to setting monetary policy adopted this summer that aims for slightly higher inflation and tests how low unemployment can fall.And the Fed’s extraordinary actions in 2020 weren’t aimed only at keeping credit flowing. Mr. Powell and other top Fed officials pushed for more government spending to help businesses and households, an uncharacteristically bold stance for an institution that tries mightily to avoid politics. As the Fed took a more expansive view of its mission, it weighed in on climate change, racial equity and other issues its leaders had typically avoided.“We’ve often relegated racial equity, inequality, climate change to simply social issues,” Mary C. Daly, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said in an interview. “That’s a mistake. They are economic issues.”In Washington, reactions to the Fed’s bigger role have been swift and divided. Democrats want the Fed to do more, portraying the attention to climate-related financial risks as a welcome step but just a beginning. They have also pushed the Fed to use its emergency lending powers to funnel cheap credit to state and local governments and small businesses.The Fed’s sweeping pandemic response pushed its powers into new territory.Credit…Ting Shen for The New York TimesRepublicans have worked to restrict the Fed to ensure that the role it has played in this pandemic does not outlast the crisis.Patrick J. Toomey, a Republican senator from Pennsylvania, spearheaded the effort to insert language into the relief package that could have forced future Fed emergency lending programs to stick to soothing Wall Street instead of trying to also directly support Main Street, as the Fed has done in the current downturn.Republicans worry that the Fed could use its power to support partisan goals — by invoking its regulatory power over banks, for instance, to treat oil and gas companies as financial risks, or by propping up financially troubled municipal governments.“Fiscal and social policy is the rightful realm of the people who are accountable to the American people, and that’s us, that’s Congress,” Mr. Toomey, who could be the next banking committee chairman and thus one of Mr. Powell’s most important overseers, said last week from the Senate floor.Mr. Toomey’s proposal was watered down during congressional negotiations, clearing the way for a broader relief deal: Congress barred the central bank from re-establishing the exact facilities used in 2020, but it did not cut off its power to help states and companies in the future.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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    Amazon Workers Near Vote on Joining Union at Alabama Warehouse

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    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAmazon Workers Near Vote on Joining Union at Alabama WarehouseThe election, expected early next year, will be one of the few times that employees of the e-commerce giant have had an opportunity to decide whether to join a union.Amazon has gone on a hiring spree during the pandemic, adding 1,400 employees a day.Credit…Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesMichael Corkery and Dec. 22, 2020, 5:27 p.m. ETThousands of workers at an Amazon warehouse near Birmingham, Ala., moved closer this week to holding a vote on whether to form a union, a milestone at the nation’s fastest growing large employer and a coup for organized labor, which has tried for years to make inroads at the e-commerce giant.After three days of hearings before the National Labor Relations Board, which concluded on Tuesday, Amazon and the union agreed on one of the most crucial details of an election: which types of workers in the facility would be allowed to vote.The agreement between Amazon and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union sets the stage for one of the few times that the company’s workers have had an opportunity to vote on whether to unionize.The vote at the fulfillment center in Bessemer, Ala., about 14 miles from Birmingham, could cover roughly 5,800 workers, including full-time and seasonal employees.Amazon and the union still need to agree whether the voting will take place by mail or in person. The election is expected to be held early next year, though the N.LR.B. still needs to set a date.The previous union election at Amazon involved a few dozen technical workers at a warehouse in Delaware in 2014. They decided not to unionize.Amazon is undertaking a historic hiring spree during the pandemic, adding 1,400 employees a day and putting the company on a pace to become the nation’s largest private employer in a few years.“We don’t believe this group represents the majority of our employees’ views,” an Amazon spokeswoman, Heather Knox, said in a statement about the union. “Our employees choose to work at Amazon because we offer some of the best jobs available everywhere we hire, and we encourage anyone to compare our overall pay, benefits and workplace environment to any other company with similar jobs.”The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union represents workers at brick-and-mortar retailers like Macy’s flagship store in Herald Square, H&M and Zara. The union’s ranks also include a diverse mix of workers at places like the General Mills factory that makes cereal in Iowa and poultry plants across the South.The union was involved in opposing Amazon’s proposal to build a second headquarters in New York, around the same time it was trying to organize workers at the company’s large warehouse on Staten Island. But that 2018 effort never progressed to a formal union election.Business & EconomyLatest UpdatesUpdated Dec. 22, 2020, 6:42 p.m. ETNew Labor Department rule would let employers distribute tips more widely.France reopens border with Britain to trucks, requiring rapid Covid-19 tests for drivers.Covid comments get a tech C.E.O. in hot water, again.The pandemic rekindled attention in Amazon’s labor force, part of a broader focus on the safety, pay and sacrifices of essential workers in grocery stores and e-commerce centers who helped keep goods flowing to homebound consumers during this year’s shutdowns.Amazon also faces increasing scrutiny, both on Capitol Hill and by state officials, about its growing might in the retail industry and its role as a large employer.Amazon has trumpeted its investments in safety, including providing its workers with free Covid-19 testing in labs it set up and operates. It also points to its starting wage of $15 an hour and health care benefits. Labor advocates and some elected officials have still raised concerns about the rates of injuries in warehouses, inflexible work schedules and the surveillance of workers to maximize productivity.The company has also been accused of retaliating against workers who speak out. Last week, the N.L.R.B. said it had found merit in a worker’s claim that Amazon illegally retaliated against him for staging protests this spring outside the Staten Island warehouse to draw attention to concerns about safety during the pandemic. Amazon said the worker had been fired for “a clear violation of our standards of conduct and harassment policy.”The Bessemer warehouse opened just as Covid-19 arrived in the United States. Amazon announced plans for it in 2018, part of an expansion into midsize metropolitan areas so the company could store more products closer to customers for quick delivery. The local economy used to depend on steel industry jobs, but those have largely disappeared, and Amazon, which pledged to hire 1,500 people, received $51 million in local and state tax incentives. Average pay at the warehouse is $15.30 an hour, Ms. Knox said.In November, the union submitted its petition to hold the election, saying it had sufficient support among the workers it said should be part of the bargaining unit. The company asked for more time to prepare a response, citing the busy holiday shopping season.“This is a year where more consumers than ever are shopping online and expecting prompt and accurate deliveries,” Amazon said in a filing with the N.L.R.B.Haggling over the terms of a union election can drag on for months, but this process moved relatively quickly. The union filed a petition for the election with the N.L.R.B. about a week before Thanksgiving.Over the course of the hearing, which began on Friday, lawyers for the union and Amazon discussed how many workers at the center should be allowed to vote. Amazon argued that temporary workers, usually hired during the holiday season, should be included, along with full-time and part-time employees performing the same tasks.The union agreed to include the seasonal workers, even though it means expanding the pool of employees it needs to win over. But by conceding the seasonal issue, the union probably avoided days of testimony from Amazon that could have stretched well past Christmas and slowed some of the organizing momentum.“Our interest is in making sure there is an election soon,” Richard Rouco, a lawyer for the union, said on Monday.The other sticking point is whether the voting should occur in person or by mail. Amazon wants the election to occur in person, even though the N.L.R.B. has raised serious concerns about exposing its election monitors to the coronavirus in the Bessemer area, where there has been a high rate of virus infections.Harry Johnson, a lawyer for Amazon, suggested that local hotel rooms and buses could be rented exclusively for the federal officials to prevent them from being exposed while they conducted the election.Mr. Rouco retorted, “I am not going to let Amazon buy a city” to prevent workers from voting by mail.The N.LR.B.’s regional office in Atlanta is expected to rule on the mail-voting issue early next month.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Carrier Plant Is Bustling, but Workers Are Wary as Trump Exits

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    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCarrier Plant Is Bustling, but Workers Are Wary as Trump ExitsThe president championed an Indiana factory facing a shutdown four years ago. Hundreds of jobs were kept, and overtime abounds. Can the revival last?Less than a month after President Trump’s victory in 2016, he worked out a deal to keep to keep the Carrier plant in Indianapolis open.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesDec. 18, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETFor the workers fortunate enough to remain employed at Carrier’s Indianapolis factory, which Donald Trump singled out as a symbol of American manufacturing distress in 2016, these should be the best of times. The assembly line is churning out furnaces seven days a week, overtime is abundant, and shares of Carrier are soaring even as Covid-19 ravages the overall economy.But that’s not how Anthony Cushingberry, a 24-year veteran of the factory floor and a union steward, sees it. “The trust left a long time ago,” he said recently after completing a 10-hour shift as a materials associate, taking deliveries of parts and shipping out scrap. “Some of us think they are stockpiling equipment so they can close the factory later.”That’s a worry that has only intensified for workers like Paul Roell, a Trump supporter who fears that after the president leaves office, Carrier management will dust off old plans to move the factory’s 1,050 jobs to Mexico.“Trump is the reason we have our job, and as long as he was in office, we were safe,” Mr. Roell said. “We don’t have the leverage anymore.”That is open to debate, but it’s clear that without Mr. Trump’s intervention even before he took office, the factory would never have become so prominent, if it had survived at all.The furnace-maker’s turn in the spotlight began in February 2016 with a 3-minute-32-second video of a Carrier executive announcing that the factory would be closed, with production shifting to a facility near Monterrey, Mexico. Workers in Indianapolis make more in an hour than their colleagues in Mexico do in a day.“This is strictly a business decision,” the executive told the booing, cursing workers before telling them to quiet down. Mr. Trump soon warned on Twitter that as president he would force Carrier, then part of the conglomerate United Technologies, to reverse its decision.Credit…Lee Klafczynski for The New York Times“The trust left a long time ago.” Anthony CushingberryIt didn’t take that long. Less than a month after his victory, Mr. Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence, Indiana’s governor at the time, worked out a deal with the company to keep the factory open. In exchange for $7 million in state tax breaks, Carrier would preserve about 700 blue-collar jobs, while laying off 632 workers.Since then, the 2016 deal itself has become a political Rorschach test. The loss of nearly half the positions, plus the tax incentives that United Technologies received, underscored the limits of Mr. Trump’s powers to save jobs, even as his supporters hailed his role in keeping the plant open at all.The factory has managed to hang on since then and even prosper. But even relatively well-paid blue-collar workers don’t feel secure. The real winnings have gone to Carrier shareholders, whose shares have more than tripled since the company was spun out of United Technologies in April.And now, with Mr. Trump about to leave the White House, the factory is at a turning point. It is operating seven days a week, with mandatory overtime for workers. Carrier has been hiring, adding some 300 workers and bringing the total work force to nearly 1,050.The hiring has helped morale improve since it bottomed out in 2018 with rising absenteeism and machine breakdowns. “I still go in and keep on pushing every day,” said Robin Maynard, who manages 13 to 15 workers as a group leader and is looking forward to retiring in two years.New hires have helped offset absenteeism, Mr. Maynard said, but not all of the newcomers could handle the job and were quickly let go. “They just weren’t factory material,” he said.James Adcock, an official with the United Steelworkers, which represents the Carrier workers, said there was hiring every week. “We’re not quite where we were in 2016,” he said, “but we are working toward that.”And for those who can handle the pace, the Indianapolis plant offers a shot at a solidly middle-class lifestyle, with wages of more than $20 an hour, with time-and-a-half pay on Saturdays and double-time on Sundays.“Financially, it’s good,” Mr. Cushingberry allowed, noting that some workers are making more than $80,000 a year. By contrast, the warehouses and logistics centers that are hiring nearby pay much less, in the range of $15 an hour. But many workers say they can’t handle the pace, however rich the rewards.Business & EconomyLatest UpdatesUpdated Dec. 18, 2020, 7:11 a.m. ETStocks close the week on an uncertain note.Catch up: Coinbase files for initial public offering.Restaurant chains are finding it difficult to navigate differing regulations.“You feel worked to death,” said Rod Smith, a 17-year veteran. “When you work 30 days straight, where is the light at the end of the tunnel?” Despite the recent additions to the work force, Mr. Smith feels Carrier should be hiring more aggressively, rather than working its existing employees so hard.“The company is trying to run it light to cut costs on manpower,” he said. Carrier declined to comment for this article, but the company recently raised its target for annual cost savings to $700 million from $600 million, and the pressure to find new efficiencies is intense.Demand for Carrier’s residential heating and cooling systems rose 46 percent in the third quarter, and the company raised its full-year sales and profit forecast when it reported earnings in late October.Credit…Lee Klafczynski for The New York TimesMr. Roell, a member of the Indiana National Guard, said the days he has to don his uniform and report for Guard duty are a welcome respite from the assembly line. “It’s not a vacation, but there’s more downtime,” he said.Employees were idled for several weeks in the spring after the coronavirus pandemic first struck, but they were soon classified as essential workers and went back to work. One employee died of Covid-19, and Carrier has adjusted production lines to create more space between employees while requiring masks and checking temperatures as people arrive for the day.To thank them for working through the pandemic in the spring, the company gave a party in a tent in June “with a chicken lunch and a pack of Life Savers as thanks,” Mr. Roell recalled, while other local employers gave bonuses and raises.At the same time, Carrier has made an unlikely emergence as a stock-market darling. Long a dull if steady performer overshadowed by the military business within United Technologies, it was spun out as an independent company in early April.The timing couldn’t have been worse — it was the depth of the recession caused by the coronavirus outbreak — and Carrier’s shares made their debut at $12. But a booming housing market, driven by low interest rates, has powered demand for new heating and air conditioning systems, said Deane M. Dray, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets.So has a desire by Americans suddenly stuck at home to upgrade their ventilation systems, Mr. Dray said. Demand for Carrier’s residential heating and cooling systems rose 46 percent in the third quarter, and the company raised its full-year sales and profit forecast when it reported earnings in late October.“There’s a silver lining to working from home — it means work on the home,” Mr. Dray said. Carrier now trades around $38 a share, and Mr. Dray sees a further opportunity for the company as the new Covid vaccines are rolled out.The two leading vaccines need to be refrigerated well below freezing, which could drive demand for cooling systems worldwide. That, plus Carrier’s new freedom to maneuver as an independent company, bodes well for shareholders.“At United Technologies, Carrier was not a priority for growth capital,” Mr. Dray said. “They are finally in control of their own destiny.”The same cannot be said of workers like Mr. Smith, Mr. Roell or Mr. Cushingberry. And while the saga of Carrier’s Indianapolis factory is well known in political circles, it hasn’t even come up on earnings calls or otherwise registered for the analysts who cover Carrier on Wall Street. “This is below the radar screen for us,” Mr. Dray said.Credit…Lee Klafczynski for The New York Times“Trump is the reason we have our job, and as long as he was in office, we were safe.”Paul Roell Carrier workers who held United Technologies shares in their retirement accounts received stock as part of the offering, but didn’t receive shares outright or otherwise take part in the spinoff. Carrier’s chief executive, David Gitlin, owns more than 200,000 shares, worth nearly $8 million.“It’s once in a lifetime, but it was a missed opportunity,” said Corey Austin, a Carrier employee who has worked on the assembly line for 17 years. But Mr. Austin, who earns $23.87 an hour, has no illusions about how lucky he is to still be employed at Carrier.His father and mother spent decades as assembly workers and United Steelworkers members at Diamond Chain, a factory in downtown Indianapolis that announced this year that it would close after operating for more than a century.Negotiations on a new contract at Carrier begin next year, and Mr. Austin hopes to see a raise when the new contract goes into effect. “Employees didn’t even know the spinoff was happening,” he said. “And a lot of employees don’t trust what management tells them. People are just in the mind-set of working every day.”In the past, new contracts have typically increased salaries by 50 cents an hour each year over three years.With or without Mr. Trump in office, Mr. Roell has no plans to look for a job anywhere else, despite his anxiety about the factory’s long-term prospects. In the meantime, he doesn’t foresee a break until Christmas Eve, and the last full day he was able to spend with his family was on Thanksgiving weekend.But with a salary of $25.96 an hour — and two children to put through college — the long hours and constant uncertainty are worth it. “It’s a pretty big worry,” he said. “I just turned 40, and I’m going to keep working there. Hopefully, they will stick around.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Unemployment Claims Show Impact of Layoffs as Virus Surges

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    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyUnemployment Claims Show Impact of Layoffs as Virus Surges“It’s going to be a challenging few months,” one economist says. A new pandemic relief bill from Congress could soften the blow.Vacant retail shops in Columbus, Ohio. The rate of jobless claims has been rising as coronavirus cases remain high across the country.Credit…Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesDec. 17, 2020, 6:25 p.m. ETThe surge in coronavirus cases is rippling through the economy, forcing employers to lay off workers at an extraordinarily high rate even as new vaccines and the possibility of more federal aid offer hope for next year.The number of Americans filing initial claims for unemployment insurance remained elevated last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. After dropping earlier in the fall, claims have moved higher, dwarfing the pace of past recessions.Consumer caution, coupled with new restrictions on business activity like indoor dining, has pummeled the hospitality industry, lodging, airlines and other service businesses. The debut of a coronavirus vaccine offers the prospect of relief, but until mass inoculations begin next year, the economy will remain under pressure.“Businesses are closing, and as a result, we are seeing job losses mount — and that’s exactly what we were fearful of going into the winter,” said Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics. “It’s going to be a challenging few months, no doubt.”Already, the pace of retail sales has dipped, as has the rate of overall economic growth. Few expect coronavirus cases to ease this winter, further holding back economic activity, but progress on a new aid bill on Capitol Hill could soften the blow.Last week brought 935,000 new claims for state benefits, compared with 956,000 the previous week. Adjusted for seasonal variations, last week’s figure was 885,000, an increase of 23,000.There were 455,000 new claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federally funded program for part-time workers, the self-employed and others ordinarily ineligible for jobless benefits. That total, which was not seasonally adjusted, was up 40,000 from the week before.The move to limit business and consumer activity by government authorities was evident in the new data. In Illinois, which banned indoor dining on Nov. 20, claims rose by over 35,000. In California, where restrictions went into effect on Dec. 3, new filings jumped by nearly 24,000.At the end of November, more than 20 million workers were collecting unemployment benefits under state or federal programs, Labor Department data indicates. Although the unemployment rate fell to 6.7 percent in November from a high of 14.7 percent in April, the persistent layoffs highlight the economic fragility of many Americans.Business & EconomyLatest UpdatesUpdated Dec. 17, 2020, 4:35 p.m. ETThe Washington Post has 3 million digital subscribers.Coinbase, a top cryptocurrency company, files for initial public offering.Amazon wrongfully fired a worker in retaliation for organizing, a labor agency says.“We are not moving in the right direction,” said Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. “With the looming expiration of benefits, it’s even more worrisome.”The pain in the labor market is particularly acute for less-skilled workers, whose jobs and finances have been hit much harder than those of more affluent Americans.The S&P 500, the Dow Jones industrials and the Nasdaq composite index closed at record highs Thursday, capping a strong rally in recent weeks. Initial public offerings have been white-hot, minting thousands of paper millionaires in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.The housing market, too, has been robust, propelled by low interest rates that make mortgages more affordable as city dwellers escape to the suburbs.Total wages and salaries have bounced back to where they before the pandemic, at $9.6 trillion a month, after dipping below $8.7 trillion at the depths of the recession in the spring. But the proportion of Americans in the labor force remains well below where it was a year ago, underscoring the deep hole the economy is slowly working its way out of.Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress continued talks on Thursday on another pandemic relief bill, something that economists have warned is overdue. Without action, two key programs for unemployed workers — Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, which provides extra weeks of aid after state benefits end — will expire this month, cutting off payments to millions.In addition to extending those programs, the $900 billion package is expected to include stimulus payments of $600 to individuals, a $300 weekly supplement to unemployment benefits, and rental and food assistance. The $2.2 trillion CARES Act, approved in March, has been credited with helping the economy survive the depths of the lockdown in many parts of the country last spring. But partisan battles in Washington have held up renewed federal assistance for months.Economists have warned that without a new aid package from Washington, economic growth could be flat in the first quarter of 2021. What’s more, the abrupt end of unemployment benefits for millions could put a further crimp in consumer spending.Data released on Wednesday showed a 1.1 percent drop in retail sales in November, a disappointing start to the crucial holiday season. Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial Services, expects economic growth to be weak for the next few months before picking up later in 2021.“Until we get a lot of people vaccinated, the economy will face a difficult test,” he said. “I don’t know if we will see an outright contraction or the loss of jobs, but the pace of improvement will slow markedly.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    How the Economy Is Actually Doing, in 9 Charts

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    Nearly a year after the coronavirus outbreak, the full impact of the pandemic on the U.S. economy remains unclear. Some of the most obvious indicators are in conflict: As some companies report enormous profits, nearly 10 million more Americans are now unemployed compared with last February, and hundreds of thousands are expected to have filed […] More