Graduation was fast approaching, but Yang Xiaomin, a 21-year-old college student in northeastern China, skipped her university’s job fair. Nor did she look for positions on her own. She didn’t think she had a chance of landing one. “Some jobs won’t even take résumés from people with bachelor’s degrees,” said Ms. Yang, who, along with a […]
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As President-elect Joseph R. Biden, Jr. prepares to take office this week, his administration and the Federal Reserve are pointed toward a singular economic goal: Get the job market back to where it was before the pandemic hit. The humming labor backdrop that existed 11 months ago — with 3.5 percent unemployment, stable or rising […]
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In a bad omen for workers outside California, Dara Khosrowshahi, the chief executive of Uber, has vowed to support efforts similar to Proposition 22 elsewhere. Lyft, a competitor, is behind political action committees that will support candidates who will protect its business model. Shawn Carolan, a venture capitalist whose firm has invested in Uber, has […]
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SHANGHAI — As most nations around the world struggle with new lockdowns and layoffs in the face of the surging pandemic, just one major economy has bounced back after bringing the coronavirus mostly under control: China. The Chinese economy rose 2.3 percent last year, the country’s National Bureau of Statistics announced on Monday in Beijing. […]
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CHANGMINGZHEN, China — The smell, salty and pungent, wafts through the freshly paved streets near the gleaming new factory. The factory is owned by a company called Laoganma, which makes a piquant chili-and-soybean sauce famous across China for its power to set mouths watering. In a time of global pandemic, when the jobs of working […]
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A majority of registered voters of both parties in the United States support initiatives to fight climate change, including many that are outlined in the climate plans announced by President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr, according to a new survey. The survey, which was conducted after the presidential election, suggests that a majority of Americans in […]
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The incoming Biden administration is expected to unveil a $1.9 trillion stimulus plan on Thursday that offers a wish list of spending measures meant to help both people and the economy recover from the coronavirus pandemic, from state and local aid and more generous unemployment benefits to mass vaccinations. Below, we run through a few […]
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Ten months after the coronavirus crisis decimated the labor market, the resurgent pandemic keeps sending shock waves through the American economy. Though more than half of the 22 million jobs lost last spring have been regained, a new surge of infections has prompted shutdowns and layoffs that have hit the leisure and hospitality industries especially […]
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“If that doesn’t get you in line, I don’t know what will,” Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, said last month. At Houston Methodist, a hospital system in Texas with 26,000 employees, workers who take the vaccine will be eligible for a $500 bonus. “Vaccination is not mandatory for our employees yet (but will be eventually),” Dr. […]
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Liz Drews, 35, started a new job as the manager of merchant operations team in Omaha during the pandemic and worries a lot about how she comes off on her video calls, since she has a 2-year-old at home. “I have a house that’s not organized or clean right now,” she said. “Especially in a […]
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WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Wednesday announced a ban on imports of cotton and tomatoes from the Xinjiang area of China, as well as all products made with those materials, citing human rights violations and the widespread use of forced labor in the region. The measure could have sweeping implications for makers of apparel […]
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Savannah Benavidez stopped working at her job as a medical biller in June to take care of her 2-year-old son after his day care shut down. Needing a way to pay her bills, she created an account on OnlyFans — a social media platform where users sell original content to monthly subscribers — and started […]
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Macro or micro? On March 18, 2019, a group of Mr. Trump’s economic advisers gathered in the Oval Office to show him the annual “Economic Report of the President,” a 700-page document that amounts to an official statement of the administration’s economic achievements, analysis and goals. He was particularly excited about one page of charts, […]
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In the remaining days of his administration, President Trump is rushing to put into effect a raft of new regulations and executive orders that are intended to put his stamp on business, trade and the economy. Previous presidents in their final term have used the period between the election and the inauguration to take last-minute […]
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For 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 […]
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WASHINGTON — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Friday promised an accelerated response to a daunting and intensifying array of challenges as the economy showed new signs of weakness, the coronavirus pandemic killed more Americans than ever, and Congress weighed impeaching President Trump a second time. As Washington remained consumed with the fallout from the […]
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The already sputtering economic rebound went into reverse last month as employers laid off workers amid rising coronavirus cases and delayed government aid. U.S. employers cut 140,000 jobs in December, the Labor Department said Friday. It was the first net decline in payrolls since last spring’s mass layoffs and followed five straight months in which […]
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It seemed appropriate that the jobs numbers for the final months of 2020 would be as nasty as the year as a whole was. It is fair to say that the loss of 140,000 jobs in December indicates a backsliding of the economic recovery that took place in the summer and fall. Other numbers in […]
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When Elena Parisi, an engineer, left Italy at age 22 to pursue a career in London five years ago, she joined the vast ranks of talented Italians escaping a sluggish job market and lack of opportunities at home to find work abroad. But in the past year, as the coronavirus pandemic forced employees around the […]
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New claims for unemployment benefits remained high last week, the government reported on Thursday, the latest evidence that the pandemic-racked economy still has a lot of lost ground to make up in the new year. The labor market has improved since the coronavirus pandemic first pummeled the economy. But of the more than 22 million […]
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Most recently, Timnit Gebru, a leading artificial intelligence researcher and one of the few Black women in her field, said she was fired over her work to fight bias. Her offense? Conducting research that was critical of large-scale AI models and being critical of existing diversity and inclusion efforts. In response, thousands of our colleagues […]
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OAKLAND, Calif. — More than 225 Google engineers and other workers have formed a union, the group revealed on Monday, capping years of growing activism at one of the world’s largest companies and presenting a rare beachhead for labor organizers in staunchly anti-union Silicon Valley. The union’s creation is highly unusual for the tech industry, […]
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BAGHDAD — In a stall off a narrow, winding alley of Baghdad’s oldest market, Ahmed Khalaf sells the smallest luxuries: nail polish, plastic hair barrettes, colored pencils. Even during the pandemic, by midmorning the stalls in Shorja market would normally be thronged with shoppers buying food staples and household goods. But last week the aisles […]
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At the end of the 19th century, most American urbanites walked to work; as late as 1930, Manhattan’s residential population was larger than it is today, meaning the city was more mixed in terms of land use, not dominated by office towers. It’s not hard to imagine that many will once again prefer to work […]
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At the end of the 19th century, most American urbanites walked to work; as late as 1930, Manhattan’s residential population was larger than it is today, meaning the city was more mixed in terms of land use, not dominated by office towers. It’s not hard to imagine that many will once again prefer to work […]
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The experience of one of the last domestic producers of the N95 mask, Prestige Manufacturing, is emblematic. During the swine flu pandemic in 2009, the company geared up production and hired more workers, only to see hospitals shift back to foreign producers once the crisis was over. “Hospitals didn’t stick with us; we had to […]
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HOUSTON — Sabrina Burns, a senior at the University of Texas at Austin, had thought she would be launching a lucrative career in the oil and gas industry when she graduated in a few months. But the collapse in the demand for oil and gas during the coronavirus pandemic has disrupted her well-laid plans and […]
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The central, befuddling economic reality of the United States at the close of 2020 is that everything is terrible in the world, while everything is wonderful in the financial markets. It’s a macabre spectacle. Asset prices keep reaching new, extraordinary highs, when around 3,000 people a day are dying of coronavirus and 800,000 people a […]
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It started in 2012 with a group of protesters outside a McDonald’s demanding a $15 minimum wage — an idea that even many liberal lawmakers considered outlandish. In the years since, their fight has gained traction across the country, including in conservative states with low union membership and generally weak labor laws. On Friday, 20 […]
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The next few months will be hell in terms of politics, epidemiology and economics. But at some point in 2021 things will start getting better. And there’s good reason to believe that once the good news starts, the improvement in our condition will be much faster and continue much longer than many people expect. OK, […]
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Speaking of media companies: While the reverberations of the Warner Bros. decision to put all its 2021 movies on its HBOMax streaming service are sorting themselves out, the shift is permanent — whether offended filmmakers like it or not. Creators who adapt will benefit, especially if they devise new models of payment. The longtime entertainment […]
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