When Manish Patel, the owner of three California beer and burger joints got approved for a Payment Protection Plan loan from the federal government, he counted himself lucky. While other business owners struggled with crashing bank sites, Patel had asked a banker to file for him. His loan arrived on […]
The unemployment rate hit 14.7% in April, the highest ever recorded, and a confirmation that COVID-19 has decimated the U.S. job market. Workers lost 20.5 million jobs between mid-March and -April, the Labor Department reported Friday. The losses compound the 870,000 jobs cut in the previous month, effectively obliterating the […]
February’s unexpectedly strong durable goods report masked weak business investment in manufacturing, a sign that an industry bracing for COVID-19 fallout already stands on unstable ground. The report released Wednesday by the Commerce Department showed a 1.2% uptick in all durable goods orders. The volatile transportation category led the charge […]
When Philadelphia’s restaurants and bars shuttered Monday afternoon in response to a city-wide ban on non-essential businesses, thousands of service workers learned they’d be laid off. Their managers recommended they file for unemployment. But for many of the city’s 80,000 food workers, the restaurant industry’s byzantine pay structures and workaround […]
New orders for core capital goods, a leading indicator of future economic growth, spiked in January, but the trend is unlikely to hold after Coronavirus hits supply chains in the coming months. The Commerce Department said Thursday that businesses spent 1.1% more on orders of non-defense capital goods, excluding aircraft, […]