Author: support

China’s August retail sales, the country’s last economic sector to recover from the economic shutdown, grew 0.5 percent in August above the August 2019 level. August is the first month this year when retail sales grew instead of shrinking. However, retail sales still lag last year’s rate overall by 8.6 percent. Business investment and rail...

China and the world’s rich countries will suffer less economic damage than feared, with the greatest harm falling on poor nations, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said last week. The global economy will contract less in 2020 than the group predicted in June, but the recovery will slow from now through the...

Under a new city council ordinance, New York City restaurants are able to add a 10-percent “COVID relief” charge to the tabs of customers dining indoors. The measure is intended to help eateries meet the rising cost of labor and added costs of sanitizing their facilities. The measure allows restaurants with up to 15 locations...

Sales in Starbucks’ urban stores will not recover to pre-pandemic levels for at least another six months, while sales at its suburban sites already are exceeding last year’s, the company said on 15 September. Starbucks is trying to find more parking space for many suburban locations and is adding drive-up windows to many of those...

Deutsche Bank’s U.S. employees working from home can expect to continue the arrangement until at least July 2021, the bank announced. Workers had asked for a clear policy statement, so they can make long-term arrangements regarding child care and other details. In a memo to its staff, the bank acknowledged their “understandable concerns about public...

Almost half of New York City dwellers earning $100,000 a year or more have considered leaving the metropolis during the pandemic because the cost of living there is so high, according to a poll by the Siena College Research Institute. Forty-four percent of the 782 city residents, surveyed in late July, said they had thought...

After closing last spring as the economy shut down, hundreds of U.S. hotels face the prospect of a weak fall and winter traveling season, leaving them without enough cash flow to continue. Almost 24 percent of U.S. hotels’ mortgage payments are at least 30 days late, compared to 1.3 percent at this time last year,...

Remember the lines being played out by politicians and the business media in the early months of the government lockdowns that the economy will come back, and it will be “V- shaped” recovery? As we had forecast in March, the longer and harder the COVID War rages, the deeper the economy will fall and millions...

The official U.S. tally of unemployed workers may be showing millions too many people jobless, due to problems with the Pandemic Unemployed Assistance (PUA) program, which gives aid to gig workers, the self-employed, and others not covered by conventional unemployment insurance. The problem seems to vary by state. Texas’s count of people receiving the program’s...

In August, consumer spending rose 0.6 percent, the fourth consecutive month of increases, but August’s pace of spending was slower than the 0.9-percent increase in July. Still, retail sales were 2.6 percent above those in August 2019. Spending on electronics was up 0.8 percent, clothing sales gained 2.9 percent, and furniture 2.1 percent. Spending at...