Shutdowns (Institutional)

More stories

  • 113 Shares189 Views

    in Economy

    Photographer Captures Economic Impact of Covid on New York

    by

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutGuidelines After VaccinationAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTimes InsiderA City Strapped: Photographing a New York in NeedThe pandemic shattered the city’s economy, affecting people’s homes, livelihoods and wallets. One photojournalist documented the hardships, as both a lament and a tribute.Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side, last September.Credit…Ashley Gilbertson for The New York TimesMarch 10, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETTimes Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Last year, as the coronavirus began spreading in New York, I worked closely with Renee Melides, a photo editor on the Business desk, on a photo essay that visualized the city as it became a global epicenter of the pandemic. When that piece was just a concept and life still seemed somewhat normal, the two of us sat over a coffee. To this day, it’s the only time I’ve had an editor green light an idea mid-pitch.“Yes,” Renee said, interrupting me. “Do it. Now.” And I walked outside and started photographing.Back then, anxiety and uncertainty dominated New York, and when the story ran, it led with an image of a man praying during a meal in a Greenwich Village McDonald’s.With that story published, I pulled back from daily assignments as a freelance photographer in an attempt to understand the virus, as well as the risks that my family and I faced. I never stopped working, though. Instead, I moved through many parts of New York on long daily runs. Nine miles out, nine miles back. I’d pass through different neighborhoods, assessing and acknowledging changes by shooting on my iPhone.For a while, the pictures were mostly empty streets, ambulances and those frightening freezer truck morgues. Then the spring surge abated and people started emerging, and the vulnerabilities of our city, exposed by the virus, became more apparent than ever. I would post images to my Instagram account, unsure of what else to do with them or even what I was trying to say.I could see that inequality had become more pronounced, observing the rich and the needy forced to share the same sidewalks. I watched as stores closed down on street corners one by one until nothing but “For Rent” signs remained, and I found myself stunned as I moved through parts of the city that were once thronged by tourists but were now empty. One day in Times Square, as I sat waiting for a pedestrian to pass through a composition I had made, it was quiet enough for me to hear the sounds of the traffic lights changing.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

  • 113 Shares129 Views

    in Economy

    They Were on Equal Footing. Then the Ground Shifted.

    by

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutNew Variants TrackerAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThey Were on Equal Footing. Then the Ground Shifted.A year of pandemic restrictions has meant some friends are flush and others foundering.Robin Arnone, Tim Gallagher, Traci Warner, and Julie Stark are among the millions of Americans whose lives and careers have been upended by the pandemic.CreditFeb. 27, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETRobin Arnone, a part-time trainer before the coronavirus pandemic, hasn’t set foot in the Colosseum Gym in Columbia, Md., since the virus shut it down almost a year ago. The gym is open again, but she doesn’t need the work. Things are going gangbusters in her other job as a home appraiser, and she hasn’t looked back.For Julie Stark, one of Ms. Arnone’s best friends and a professional dog walker, things are not so rosy. With many clients stuck at home in the pandemic and taking care of their own pets, her services are no longer in demand. Instead of walking seven dogs each day, she now walks three.Ms. Stark has had to economize, eliminating dance and gymnastics classes for her children to save $350 a month. She doesn’t know when her clients will want her back, but it’s not something she discusses with Ms. Arnone. “We don’t talk about money,” Ms. Stark said.“It would be awkward if she were a dog walker and doing unbelievably well,” she added. “I’m happy for her.”And there is a lot in Ms. Arnone’s life to be happy about. She replaced her used Lexus with a new one last year, and in December she indulged herself with a $550 Dyson hair dryer. “It felt a little ridiculous,” she said of the purchase. “But I worked hard, and if there’s any year I’m going to do it, it’s this year.”Robin Arnone and Julie Stark are among the millions of friends who were on a relatively equal financial footing before last March — people who would have thought nothing of splitting the check on a night out — and now find themselves on vastly different trajectories. Lockdowns changed what Americans can do as well as what services they need, and in the process created divergent fates for many workers.The pandemic has wreaked havoc on many who were already struggling. Nearly 10 million fewer people have jobs, and some 26 million reported not always having enough to eat, according to Census Bureau data.For the 50 percent or so of the population that make up the middle class — defined by Pew Research Center as having an income ranging from around $45,000 to $135,000 for a household of three — the toll has been uneven. Like a tornado, the pandemic can devastate one household and leave neighboring ones unscathed.Ms. Arnone’s world, in the Washington-Baltimore area, exemplifies that. The gym where she worked, the Colosseum, is owned by her friend Tim Gallagher. His monthly income at the gym is down 25 to 30 percent, and a quarter of the gym’s members have suspended their accounts. To save money, he has lowered the thermostat at home to 60 degrees from 65, and while his truck has more than 340,000 miles on it, he has no plans to replace it.“You just got to scrape along and gut it out,” he said. “We’re really struggling to get by.”But in Ms. Arnone’s other field, home appraising, her friends and colleagues are reaping rewards from the booming housing market, where January sales were up 23.7 percent from a year earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors. Ultralow mortgage rates have prompted a wave of refinancings, which require fresh appraisals.“I don’t have much to complain about,” said Traci Warner, a friend of Ms. Arnone’s and a home appraiser in Waldorf, Md., south of Washington. After her husband was laid off from his sales job in April, Ms. Warner’s work picked up the slack.It’s not that things are perfect, but unlike Mr. Gallagher, she does not feel that she is barely hanging on.This contrast is mirrored in the larger economy. Weekly unemployment claims by newly laid-off workers remain at historically elevated levels even as stock indexes reach record highs.Vaccines have arrived, but their slow rollout means it will be months before anything resembling normal activity can resume at restaurants, hotels, gyms, airports, malls and other businesses that depend on bringing people together.“It’s very uneven,” said Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, a forecasting and research group. “The recovery for the most vulnerable parts of the population will take years.” Not only are wages and salaries down for the hardest-hit segments of the work force, he noted, but so are overall employment and participation in the labor force.At the very top, the gains have been staggering. In eight months after the pandemic hit the United States, the wealth of the country’s roughly 650 billionaires grew by $1 trillion, according to a November study by the Institute for Policy Studies and other progressive groups. That included a $70 billion lift for just one of those magnates: the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos.White-collar employees, having emerged mostly unscathed from the sharp downturn in 2020, are looking forward to what they hope will be a robust recovery in 2021 once most people are vaccinated. Service workers, devastated by the idling of entire industries amid lockdowns and other restrictions, just want the pain to abate.The split was evident in the latest jobs report from the Labor Department. While professional and business services employment jumped by 97,000 in January, that job growth was almost entirely offset in the private sector by losses in retail, leisure and hospitality industries, among others.So while lines at food banks lengthen, new Teslas dot parking lots, and there are waiting lists for Peloton machines so the most fortunate can keep up with their workouts from home.Peter Atwater, a lecturer in economics at the College of William & Mary, has popularized a term for this phenomenon: the K-shaped recovery. While one arm of the K ascends, the other is driving lower. “There’s an enormous divide in confidence,” he said. “And we buy and spend based on how we feel.”Janet L. Yellen, the newly confirmed Treasury secretary, extended the metaphor during her confirmation hearings. “We are living in a K-shaped economy, one where wealth built upon wealth, while working families fell farther and farther behind,” she said.Life on the UpsideRobin Arnone replaced her used Lexus with a new one last year.Ms. Arnone misses her days at the gym, especially spending time with clients. It is the first time since she was 15 that she hasn’t worked as a trainer, she said. But she is feeling pretty good otherwise.Before the pandemic, she would train people in the morning and shift to her real estate work in the afternoon. Now she rises at 6 a.m. to start writing up appraisals before hitting the road to visit as many as eight homes in a day.“I’ve declined a boatload of appraisal jobs,” she said. “I just didn’t have the time.”After typically handling 500 appraisals a year, she did 635 last year. She is paid by the banks that issue the mortgages, and last year she estimates she earned roughly $250,000 for her services, up from about $185,000 in previous years.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

  • 125 Shares119 Views

    in Economy

    Hurt by Lockdowns, California’s Small Businesses Push to Recall Newsom

    by

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeBake: Maximalist BrowniesListen: To Pink SweatsGrow: RosesUnwind: With Ambience VideosAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHurt by Lockdowns, California’s Small Businesses Push to Recall GovernorThe pain for such enterprises been particularly acute in the state, leading some to back an effort to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom.Daniela Del Gaudio, left, and Alexandra Del Gaudio, are the founders of the Wild Plum, a yoga studio in the San Fernando Valley in California. By the time they reopened last month, they said, they had $70,000 in debt.Credit…Rozette Rago for The New York TimesFeb. 19, 2021Updated 6:26 p.m. ETLOS ANGELES — Alexandra and Daniela Del Gaudio had never been to a political rally before, let alone one to protest a coronavirus lockdown and recall Gov. Gavin Newsom. But things had changed in the sisters’ lives since they opened the Wild Plum, a yoga and wellness space, in 2018.The Wild Plum, in California’s San Fernando Valley, closed in March when Mr. Newsom issued pandemic stay-at-home orders for the state. By the time the Wild Plum reopened last month, when Mr. Newsom relaxed the latest lockdown restrictions, the sisters had amassed $70,000 in debt. So there they were at a recent anti-Newsom rally in a restaurant parking lot in the Sherman Oaks neighborhood of Los Angeles, along with dozens of other business owners.“Everyone says to walk away, but we put everything we have into this,” Daniela Del Gaudio, 33, said. “We’re banging our heads trying to figure out what to do.”California was one of the earliest states to go into lockdown last spring, and it is now emerging from a second lockdown, which started in December. That stop-start-stop has created a groundswell of anger toward Mr. Newsom, a Democrat in the third year of his first term, that is increasingly fueling a movement to recall him from office in one of the bluest of blue states.Demonstrators rally for a recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom in Huntington Beach, Calif., in November.Credit…Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated PressThe recall threat to Mr. Newsom has considerable momentum. Since March, 1.5 million Californians have signed a petition to oust Mr. Newsom, enough to trigger an election for a new governor. If enough of the signatures are verified, it will be the fourth recall election of a governor in American history.After they are verified and costs are estimated, the state has 60 to 80 days to schedule an election. Voters will be asked two questions on the ballot. The first is whether Mr. Newsom should be recalled. The second: Who should replace him? If the first question on the recall comes up short, the second becomes moot.The recall campaign has been funded by the Republican National Committee, which committed $250,000, as well as Silicon Valley tech investors such as Chamath Palihapitiya, who donated $100,000. Small-business owners have also been an engine behind the effort, said Randy Economy, the spokesman for the Recall Gavin Newsom campaign.“He’s broken the back of small-business owners and put many of them out of business for the rest of their lives,” Mr. Economy said. He said many were incensed when Mr. Newsom was photographed in November having dinner at the French Laundry, a temple to haute cuisine in Napa Valley, in violation of state guidelines. (When photos of the dinner were leaked, Mr. Newsom apologized for his behavior.) Small businesses across the country have suffered from shutdowns that sometimes seem to flare up as suddenly as surges in the coronavirus itself. Restaurants, gyms, corner stores and spas have closed, some after trying to hang in there for months.The pain in California has been acute. Nearly 40,000 small businesses had closed in the state by September — more than in any other state since the pandemic began, according to a report compiled by Yelp. Half had shut permanently, according to the report, far more than the 6,400 that had closed permanently in New York.Few of the pandemic choices that Mr. Newsom has faced have been easy. California has suffered enormously from Covid-19, with more than 3.5 million cases and 47,000 deaths. Los Angeles County, one of the hardest-hit places in the recent virus surge, has more than 1.2 million cases and 19,000 deaths.Dan Newman, a political strategist for Mr. Newsom, said the governor was focused on coronavirus vaccinations and reopening the state. Mr. Newman blamed “state and national G.O.P. partisans” for supporting “this Republican recall scheme in hopes of creating an expensive, distracting and destructive circus.”Acknowledging that the pandemic has “heavily impacted our small businesses,” the director of the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, Dee Dee Myers, pointed to several state programs that offer them help. They include the California Small Business Covid-19 Relief Grant Program, the California Rebuilding Fund and the Main Street Hiring Tax Credit.Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, said in a statement that Mr. Newsom had “proven that he is woefully unqualified to lead the state of California.”In places such as Los Angeles County, where Mr. Newsom won 72 percent of the vote in 2018, and neighboring Orange County, a more conservative area, the small-business anger is particularly intense. One local business owner leading the movement to open California’s economy is Andrew Gruel, 40, a chef who owns Slapfish, a seafood restaurant chain.Mr. Gruel argued in an interview last month that California’s lockdown rules were confusing and hurt small businesses disproportionately. “None of the rules make sense,” he said one afternoon from the Slapfish in Huntington Beach.As evidence, Mr. Gruel pointed to the Walmart just up the road. While local restaurants could not have diners sit outside in the first lockdown, even six feet apart and with plexiglass between them, a Burger King inside the Walmart remained open, he said.“And that was legal,” he said. “It’s like W.W.E. in there, people cross-body blocking each other for B.K. delight.”Opposition to Mr. Newsom’s pandemic policies is particularly intense among small businesses in the Los Angeles area.Credit…David Walter Banks for The New York TimesMr. Gruel said he had laid off 100 people, had closed one of his restaurants permanently and was worried about the rest of Slapfish’s two dozen locations. The company has lost around $100,000 and taken on a lot of debt, he added.That afternoon, he let people sit outside anyway, even though it was against the lockdown restrictions at the time. “You could do a citizen’s arrest,” he suggested.Local business associations said they were also furious. Nick Rimedio, who serves on the West Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, said the lockdowns had widened a class divide. While quarantine has been almost relaxing for what he called the wealthy “Zoom class,” it has been a nightmare for the poor and middle class who have storefronts or work service jobs in businesses in the area, he said.“If you’re well-to-do, if you have a healthy stock portfolio, if you can work from home, you’ve saved on your commute. You’re doing great,” Mr. Rimedio said.Angela Marsden, the owner of Pineapple Hill Saloon and Grill, a cozy bar in Sherman Oaks, has become another anti-lockdown leader. In December, she posted a video on Facebook in which she was masked and near tears. She pointed the camera at a movie set with outdoor tables, which was legal, and then contrasted that with her newly built outdoor dining setup, which had just been banned. The video went viral, and she started a GoFundMe page that has raised $220,000.Last month, Ms. Marsden, 48, gathered dozens of local business owners, including the Del Gaudio sisters, to discuss how to survive and what to do to push for reopening. Many owned bars and restaurants; others owned gyms or spas. Almost all of their locations had been closed since March.They sat at different tables, spaced a few feet apart. Most wore masks most of the time.“Our retirement savings are gone,” said Joe Lyons, who owns the Celtic Raven Pub in Winnetka, Calif., with his wife, Belinda.Credit…Rozette Rago for The New York TimesBelinda and Joe Lyons, who own the Celtic Raven Pub and co-own JJ Sullivan’s Irish Pub in the San Fernando Valley, said they had furloughed 12 people. One of their suppliers was demanding payments they could not make, they said. The Celtic Raven landlord has been pressuring them for 10 months of unpaid rent. By March 1, they will be personally liable for $49,000 in back rent.“It’s going to kill us,” Mr. Lyons said. “Our retirement savings are gone.”But the hardest part, Ms. Lyons said, was Mr. Newsom’s policies.“When we were told we could open last June by Gavin Newson, I put full insurance back with the intention of reopening, only to be told that we could not,” she said. “That cost me over $8,000 that I’m still paying, as the insurance company would not cancel.”Another attendee was Guido Murga, the owner of One Headlight, a hospitality supplies distributor. He said his business was down because restaurants, his main customers, were hurting.“I sell napkins, straws, cherries, olives, to-go cups. When they close, I close,” he said. “I’m drowning week to week.”Ms. Marsden had never led a rally before, but she got into the energy of it.“Come April or May, how many of us will be here?” she asked, her voice rising.“None!” some in the crowd shouted.“I’m drowning week to week,” said Guido Murga, whose supply business in Los Angeles depends on restaurants.Credit…Rozette Rago for The New York TimesThe event was disrupted midway through when a small group of virus skeptics who had joined the crowd grew boisterous and demanded that people stop wearing masks. The moment reflected the complexity at play. Those fighting to open businesses in a responsible way were tangling with more Trumpist factions, who saw new allies in some of the apolitical business owners.Carey Ysais, owner of the bar Kahuna Tiki, stood up to call everyone back to order.“Guys, where you’re at is a different place than where we’re at,” Mr. Ysais said, as the anti-mask crowd jeered. “Are you a bar owner? Excuse me, are you a bar owner?”The Del Gaudio sisters did not leave optimistic.“We were raised to work hard. We’re not even given that opportunity,” Alexandra Del Gaudio, 36, said. “We’re trying to pull our families out of poverty.”Thomas Fuller More

  • 100 Shares189 Views

    in Economy

    Pete Wells's Odyssey as Restaurant Critic During Pandemic

    by

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeMake: BirriaExplore: ‘Bridgerton’ StyleParent: With ImprovRead: Joyce Carol OatesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTimes InsiderChange by the Plateful: Covering Restaurants in a PandemicTo capture New York’s food scene in these times, I’ve adapted to many roles. But the essence of my job remains the same: hunting for a good meal.Pete Wells’s review of the restaurant Falansai was his first based solely on takeout and delivery.Credit…Adam Friedlander for The New York TimesFeb. 17, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETTimes Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.In November, Falansai, a Vietnamese restaurant that had closed at the start of the pandemic, was taken over by a new owner and chef named Eric Tran. I was intrigued by his menu, which included confit duck necks and a seafood curry soup made with peanut milk. The backyard was supposed to be open for outdoor dining on warm nights, but there weren’t any. Too curious to wait for spring, I placed a delivery order, using my own name instead of an alias so the courier would know which bell to ring.Mr. Tran told me later that when he saw the order, he and his sous-chef asked each other whether they were cooking for the Times restaurant critic.“Why would Pete Wells order delivery from us?” the sous-chef asked.“Maybe he’s hungry?” Mr. Tran replied.I was. But I was on the job, too, and that first order persuaded me to review Mr. Tran’s restaurant without eating on the premises at all. It was the first review I’ve written based solely on takeout and delivery but, as restaurants, and my attempts to cover them, continue to adapt to the pandemic, I imagine it won’t be the last.For months after all the restaurant dining rooms in the city were forced to close last March, I wrote nothing that resembled a review. The entire business and all the people in it were suffering, and I spent my time as a reporter, finding out how some of them were getting along. I quickly learned that when talking with anybody who had earned a livelihood from restaurants or bars, I needed to budget at least an hour.Before the pandemic, I normally called chefs after I’d written a review of their restaurant but before it was published, to check facts. The chefs usually sounded as if I were calling with the results of a lab test. One chef called me back from a hospital and told me his wife was in the next room giving birth to their first child, but — oh no, don’t worry, it’s fine, he said; in fact, I’d picked a perfect time to call! These were, in other words, awkward conversations.The ones I had last spring were different. It was as if the fear and distrust all chefs feel toward all critics were gone. They talked about going bankrupt, they talked about crying and not wanting to get out of bed. What did they have left to lose by talking to me?By June, the crisis had settled into a kind of desperate stability. I was starting to run out of restaurants-in-extremis ideas when, midway through the month, the city announced that restaurants could serve on sidewalks and in the streets. On the day outdoor dining began, I rode my bike into Manhattan to have lunch at the first open restaurant I could find. I was as thrilled to eat someone else’s cooking as I was to do something that resembled my old job.It still took a few weeks before I wrote any reviews. At first, I worried that any opinion of mine would be unfair when restaurants were trying so hard to adapt to the new reality. Eventually, I understood that that was exactly what would make the reviews worth writing. Good food in a pandemic was great; great food seemed like a miracle, and I was finding great food all around.My pandemic reviews note the ways that restaurants have trimmed menus and simplified dishes, but even the shorter, stripped-down versions had a lot to praise. There was something that got to me about these small businesses — some of which had opened in the pandemic, all of which were fighting for survival — trying to bring New Yorkers some joy while keeping them healthy. I didn’t want to just report on it. I wanted to bang a drum so people would pay attention.The decision not to put stars on the reviews, as The Times has since the 1960s, was easy. Formerly, I tried to make the stars reflect how close any given restaurant came to being an ideal version of itself. But in the pandemic, there were no ideal restaurants, only places that were making it up as they went along.Almost everything about outdoor dining appealed to me: the street life, the flower pots, the shoestring architecture of in-street platforms. Even the weather played along, staying mostly dry and temperate nearly through the end of December. But there was no question that by Christmas it was getting too cold to dine al fresco.In my reporter mode, I had been told by scientists, airflow engineers and other experts how Covid-19 is transmitted, and all last summer and fall I felt fairly certain that eating outdoors could be relatively safe for everyone. (Some public-health experts believe that now, even outdoor dining in New York City is unsafe while the local risk of Covid transmission remains very high.) I did not have the same certainty about dining indoors or about some of the plywood structures I call enclosed porches, particularly their windows and doors, which are closed so they have almost no ventilation. I have walked away from several of those.I wanted to keep reviewing restaurants, but I didn’t want to go back into their dining rooms both because of the risk and because I was afraid readers would take it as an all-clear signal. When the governor halted indoor dining again in December, my selfish reaction was relief. Then I briefly got depressed. How would restaurants survive? And how would I keep writing about them?One answer had already started to appear on sidewalks and streets in the form of small greenhouses, huts, tents and yurts. Inside these personal dining rooms, you can (and should) sit just with people from your own household. If the restaurant thoroughly airs the space out between seatings, any germs you breathe in should be the same ones that are bouncing around your home. Many restaurants instruct their servers to stay outside the structures as much as possible, though some don’t. Indoor dining is back on in New York, but for now, I order more takeout than I’ve ever done in my life. I am still going on my rounds, too, but I dress differently these days. The other night, I put on thermal underwear, thick wool socks, a heavy shirt, synthetic-blend trousers and a bulky sweater. After lacing up my lined hiking boots, I packed a scarf and a Microfleece travel blanket into a tote bag. Then I strapped on a couple of masks. I looked like I was embarking on an overnight snowshoeing trek, but I was only going to Manhattan to chase down some tacos.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

  • 100 Shares139 Views

    in Economy

    Winter Storm Disrupts Automakers, Retailers and Delivery Services

    by

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Winter StormsliveLatest UpdatesMapping the Storm’s ImpactMillions Without PowerDisruptions to BusinessesPhotosAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWinter Storm Disrupts Wide Swath of American BusinessPower outages, natural gas shortages and icy conditions made it hard for automakers, retailers and delivery carriers to operate across much of the South and Midwest.A UPS worker made deliveries in Chicago on Tuesday after an overnight storm dumped more than a foot of snow on the area.Credit…Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated PressPeter Eavis and Feb. 16, 2021, 6:05 p.m. ETThe winter storm that barreled across much of the United States over the holiday weekend severely disrupted businesses including large car factories, retail chains and the delivery services that people are deeply reliant on for basic necessities.General Motors, Ford Motor, Toyota, Nissan and other automakers suspended or shut down production at plants from Texas to Indiana as rolling blackouts, natural gas shortages and icy conditions made it difficult to keep assembly lines running.Walmart was forced to close as many as 500 stores across the South and Midwest, according to a map that was being updated in real time on its website. Pharmacy chains also shut stores, potentially making it harder for customers to collect prescriptions and also delaying vaccinations against the coronavirus, which had begun at many pharmacies at the end of last week.Publix, a grocery and pharmacy chain that operates across the South, said on Tuesday that it had to delay vaccinations in Florida because vaccine shipments were delayed by the storm. CVS said it had closed about 775 stores. Walgreens said around 200 stores in Texas were closed because of power disruptions.The storm dealt a blow to huge economic hubs that are accustomed to hurricanes and tornadoes but not extreme winter weather that strains power grids and sends temperatures well below averages for this time of year.“I was born in Fort Worth in 1956, and I’ve never seen weather this bad for this long,” said George Westhoff, president of Midland Manufacturing, a Fort Worth company with 40 employees that makes well cylinders and other metal products. “I’m not sure how much of my equipment would start up under these cold conditions,” he said, noting that he was the only person at his plant on Tuesday.Because millions of people have been working from home during the coronavirus pandemic, winter storms may not have quite the economic cost they once did. But the loss of power can sever the internet connections that people need to do their jobs. PowerOutage.us, a site that tracks electricity disruptions, said that, of the 12.5 million customers it tracks in Texas, 3.2 million were without power on Tuesday.Managers of the electricity grid in Texas and elsewhere have had to order rolling blackouts after many power plants were forced offline because of icy conditions and some could not get sufficient supplies of natural gas. Some wind turbines also shut down. At the same time, demand for electricity and natural gas has shot up because of the cold weather.“What’s complicating things is that huge swaths of Texas have lost power,” said Michael Trevino, a vice president at the Dallas Regional Chamber.Group 1 Automotive, a big chain of car dealerships based in Houston, has closed many of its franchises in Texas and Oklahoma.“Our office doesn’t have power. Dallas is snowed in. Oklahoma is snowed in. Houston is icy,” said Pete Delongchamps, a senior vice president at the company. He is hunkering down at home, where both power and water are out. “It’s blankets and water jugs.”Some companies kept operating. Raytheon Technologies, a large aerospace and military contractor, said Tuesday that its facility in McKinney, Texas, was open. And Home Depot and Costco stores in Southlake, a suburb of Dallas and Fort Worth, were open Tuesday.Christina Cornell, a Home Depot spokeswoman, said over 100 stores in Texas and elsewhere were closed or operated with reduced hours on Monday but the majority of them reopened Tuesday. She added that all Home Depot stores in the United States have backup generators that allow them to operate basic services during blackouts.The storm has caused extensive delays across the vast package delivery networks that many people now rely on as shopping has shifted online.FedEx said winter weather had caused “substantial disruptions” at its Memphis hub, which is the company’s largest center, occupying 800 acres, and is normally capable of sorting nearly half a million documents and packages an hour. FedEx added that delays were possible across the United States for Tuesday deliveries.UPS said weather could cause delays in areas not directly hit by the storms. Packages may take longer to get from one place to another, and many delivery services move goods through big sorting hubs in the middle of the country to serve both the East and West Coasts. UPS’s main air hub is in Louisville, Ky., and it also has a hub in Dallas, for example.The winter storm prompted the United States Postal Service to close post offices, processing hubs and other facilities in Texas, Alabama and Mississippi, according to its website.The storm has also affected Amazon, which operates its own large logistics network that includes planes, hubs and delivery vans operated by contractors.“The health and safety of our employees, customers and the drivers who deliver packages is our top priority,” Maria Boschetti, a spokeswoman, said in a statement. “Out of an abundance of caution and to ensure everyone’s safety, we have closed some of our sites in Arkansas, Illinois, Oklahoma, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, Indiana and Kentucky.”Some automakers said they shut down operations in an effort to limit their energy use. Ford closed a plant in Claycomo, Mo., near Kansas City, Mo., this week “to ensure we minimize our use of natural gas that is critical to people’s homes,” a company spokeswoman said.The plant produces the F-150 pickup truck, one of the industry’s best-selling vehicles. Ford doesn’t plan to resume normal operations at its shuttered plant until Monday. The factory employs about 7,300 people. Union workers will be paid 75 percent of their gross pay for the week.Nissan closed its four U.S. plants on Monday and canceled the morning and afternoon shifts on Tuesday, a spokeswoman said. Two of the plants, in Canton, Miss., and Smyrna, Tenn., make cars and the other two, both in Decherd, Tenn., make engines. The company is monitoring the situation to see if it can resume production Tuesday night.General Motors said Tuesday that it was not affected by the natural gas shortage but that it was still suspending the first shift at four plants in Tennessee, Indiana, Kentucky and Texas because of “the significant winter weather conditions.”Trucks stuck in traffic on Monday because of the storm in Austin, Texas.Credit…Montinique Monroe/Getty ImagesToyota Motor canceled the first and second shifts at five factories, including its largest U.S. plant in Georgetown, Ky., and a pickup truck plant in San Antonio, because of the winter storm and energy disruptions it caused. The other three plants are in Kentucky, Indiana and Mississippi.Honda canceled or suspended late shifts on Monday and early shifts on Tuesday at plants in Alabama, Georgia, Ohio and Indiana. The company is planning to resume production Tuesday night at all but its Alabama car plant, where Tuesday evening’s shift has also been canceled.The shutdowns add to troubles for Ford, G.M. and other automakers that have separately had to idle plants because of a global semiconductor shortage. The chip shortage is expected to reduce the profit of automakers by billions of dollars this year.Some companies are looking forward to a surge of business after the bad weather passes.Mr. Delongchamps, the Group 1 Automotive executive, said, “We will probably see a pickup in body shop business and repairs, from people whose cars got banged up or frozen.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

  • 138 Shares179 Views

    in Economy

    PPP Aid to Small Businesses: How Much Did $500 Billion Help?

    by

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story$500 Billion in Aid to Small Businesses: How Much Did It Help?Some economists say the Paycheck Protection Program has not proved as useful as other aid. The debate could sway the new administration’s plans.Small businesses line a street in Westwood, N.J. A $900 billion federal relief package included $325 billion in small business aid, most of it for the Paycheck Protection Program.Credit…Mohamed Sadek for The New York TimesBen Casselman and Feb. 1, 2021, 3:00 a.m. ETAs Democrats and Republicans spent months last fall arguing over how to rescue the economy, one provision drew widespread support from lawmakers: reviving the Paycheck Protection Program, the government’s marquee effort to help small businesses weather the pandemic.The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, called the lending program “a bipartisan slam dunk.” House Democrats included an extension and expansion of the program in aid packages in the summer and the fall. And Treasury economists said in December that the program might have saved nearly 19 million jobs.Yet there is dissent from one notable contingent: Academic economists who have studied the program have concluded that it has saved relatively few jobs and that, at a cost of more than half a trillion dollars, it has been far less efficient than other government efforts to help the economy.“A very large chunk of the benefit went to a very small share of the firms, and those were probably the firms least in need,” said David Autor, an M.I.T. economist who led one study.The divergence in views over the program’s economic payoff stems in part from ambiguity about its goals: saving jobs or saving businesses.Using different methodology than the Treasury economists, Mr. Autor says the Paycheck Protection Program saved 1.4 million to 3.2 million jobs. Other researchers have offered broadly similar estimates.Given the program’s cost, saving jobs on that scale doesn’t necessarily qualify as a success. Unemployment benefits also provide income, at far less expense, and programs like food assistance and aid to state and local governments pack a larger economic punch, according to many assessments.And because the paycheck program was designed to reach as many businesses as possible, much of the money went to companies that were at little risk of laying off workers, or that would have brought them back quickly even without the help.“It’s just a really inefficient use of funds,” said Eric Zwick, an economist at the University of Chicago’s business school who has studied the program.Many policy experts on Wall Street and in Washington — as well as businesses and banks on Main Streets across the country — say the program’s merits should be assessed instead on what it did to save businesses. On that basis, they say, it helped prevent a greater calamity and fostered economic healing.“A major goal was to keep these businesses alive so that when the economy started to recover and then the economy reopened, there would be businesses around to hire unemployed workers,” said Michael R. Strain, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. Preliminary evidence suggests that the program has succeeded by that metric, he said.In the short term, the program’s proponents are winning the argument. When Congress approved a $900 billion relief package in December, most of the $325 billion in small-business assistance was for a slightly modified version of the Paycheck Protection Program. Businesses began applying for the aid last month.But the debate over the program’s merits could shape the next round of aid. President Biden’s $1.9 trillion pandemic relief plan includes billions for small businesses, but no new money for the program. His aides are weighing what to do about funds already allocated.Mr. Biden’s proposal includes direct grants for the hardest-hit small businesses and a request for Congress to find new ways to help restaurants struggling with consumer pullbacks and state and local restrictions.Many Democrats on Capitol Hill, along with some advocates for small-business relief in think tanks and lobbying shops around Washington, say lawmakers should move on to a more focused and efficient method for supporting small businesses until widespread vaccination fully reopens the economy.Congress created the Paycheck Protection Program in March as businesses shut down early in the pandemic. The program sought to stem layoffs by providing forgivable, low-interest loans to help pay employees even if they weren’t working.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

  • 138 Shares189 Views

    in Economy

    It Could Be a Great Year, if Your Business Survives Winter

    by

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesVaccination StrategiesVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyIt Could Be a Great Year, if Your Business Survives WinterTough sacrifices may still be required, but many see a post-pandemic resurgence in the year ahead.Maria Rodriguez mopped the front entry at the Hampton Inn & Suites Herndon-Reston in Herndon, Va., which has seen a significant decrease in guests since the pandemic began.Credit…Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesNelson D. Schwartz and Jan. 11, 2021, 10:46 a.m. ETFor Ashlie Ordonez, owner of the Bare Bar Studio, a spa in Denver, vaccinations for the coronavirus can’t come soon enough. While she anticipates better days later this year, surviving until then will be a struggle, and she knows the next few months will be lean ones.“I sold my wedding ring so we could pay the bills and keep the doors open,” she said. “I’m sacrificing everything to make it through this pandemic.”Vinay Patel, who manages a chain of nine hotels in Maryland and Virginia, is looking even further out for a recovery: “2022 is when we’ll see the real true potential of the vaccine.” Mr. Patel added that his biggest hope for the coming year is a measure of stability, if not prosperity.As 2021 begins, business owners big and small confront a rapidly shifting landscape. An end to the pandemic is in sight as inoculations begin, but the slow pace of vaccinations has delayed the turnaround they were counting on. Hanging on is the chief goal for many, even as others look ahead to what they consider to be an inevitable rebound.This year “is not going to be a walk through the park, but I’m optimistic,” said Jimmy Etheredge, chief executive for North America at Accenture, the strategy and consulting company. “The eggs are in the vaccine basket.”Even as he anticipates a turnaround, Mr. Etheredge emphasized that many of the changes wrought by the pandemic, such as working remotely and a shift to cloud technology by companies, are here to stay.“Ten months of pandemic has accelerated technological change by 10 years,” he said. “We’re never going to go back to the way things were before.”In the meantime, it’s clear that there will be winners and losers this year. Restaurateurs, leisure and hospitality businesses and the travel industry will continue to struggle as a surge in Covid-19 cases prompts renewed lockdowns in many parts of the country. Few expect imminent salvation.The biggest companies, on the other hand, are positioning themselves for what could be a surge in consumption when the pandemic recedes. Technology, manufacturing, health care and some other industries are booming.Indeed, the contrast was evident last week as major stock indexes notched new highs even as the Labor Department reported that the economy lost 140,000 jobs in December. It was the first decline in months, with the leisure and hospitality sector alone losing half a million positions as lockdowns are enacted.“There is light at the end of the tunnel,” said Brian Moynihan, chief executive of Bank of America. “But there’s a side of the economy that’s still in trouble. There’s a group of Americans who want to go to work but can’t because work isn’t open.”Mr. Moynihan said he was pleased that the $900 billion pandemic relief package was passed and signed into law after many fits and starts, and he favors more stimulus if necessary. Roughly 19 million workers are collecting unemployment benefits, and the employment picture remains bleak for many lower-wage workers in the service economy.Ashlie Ordonez, owner of the Bare Bar Studio, a spa in Denver.Credit…Benjamin Rasmussen for The New York Times“I sold my wedding ring so we could pay the bills and keep the doors open,” she said.Credit…Benjamin Rasmussen for The New York TimesPresident-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. signaled Friday that trillions of dollars’ worth of fresh stimulus could be on the way, and the imminent Democratic control of the Senate makes that much more likely.As trying as the next few months seem, the economy is in better shape than in the months after Covid-19 first struck, when unemployment soared to 14.8 percent. The jobless rate in December stood at 6.7 percent.Holiday spending by Bank of America customers was 2.5 percent higher than last year, and account holders actually have more in savings than they did before the pandemic. “There’s a bunch of sectors that are doing very well in terms of profits,” Mr. Moynihan added.Even so, these remain times of limbo for many executives and business owners, when the old rules no longer apply but the post-pandemic reality has yet to materialize.The Coronavirus Outbreak More