Business Highlights
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Macy's to furlough majority of its 125,000 workers
NEW YORK (AP) — Macy's says it will temporarily stop paying tens of thousands of employees who were thrown out of work when the chain closed its stores in response to collapsing sales during the pandemic. The majority of its 125,000 employees, including stock people and sales clerks, will still collect health benefits, but the company said that it is transitioning to an "absolute minimum workforce" needed to maintain basic operations. Macy's has lost the bulk of its sales due to the temporarily closing of all 500 of its stores starting March 18. The furloughs are bad news for an economy in which the retail industry supports one out of four workers.
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Trump uses wartime act but GM says it’s already moving fast
DETROIT (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday invoked the Defense Production Act after claiming that GM wasn't moving fast enough to make much-needed ventilators in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Yet experts on managing factory production say GM is already making an extraordinary effort for a company that normally isn't in the business of building ventilators. GM expects start making the machines in mid-April, ramping up to a rate of 10,000 per month as quickly as possible. The company is working with Ventec Life Systems and both say the Defense Production Act of 1950 doesn’t change what they’re doing because they’re already moving as fast as they can.
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Wall Street's rally rolls on, led by health care stocks
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks climbed on Wall Street Monday, led by big gains for health care companies announcing developments that could aid in the coronavirus outbreak. The rally tacked more gains onto a recent upswing for the market, which is coming off the best week for the S&P 500 in 11 years. Nascent optimism is budding that the worst of the selling may be approaching, but markets around the world are still tentative as global authorities try to nurse the economy through the pandemic. The S&P 500 remains 22.4% below its record set last month, and oil tumbled to an 18-year low.
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Urgent question from small businesses: When will aid arrive?
NEW YORK (AP) — When will the money arrive? That's the urgent question for small business owners who have been devastated by the coronavirus outbreak. They're awaiting help from the $2 trillion rescue package signed into law Friday. But with bills fast coming due, no end to business closings and an economy that's all but shut down, owners are worried about survival. Millions of owners face April 1 due dates for rent, mortgage, credit card and other payments.
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New Trump mileage standards to gut Obama climate effort
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is expected to relax ambitious Obama-era vehicle mileage standards and raise the ceiling on damaging fossil fuel emissions for years to come. The rule expected to be announced Tuesday would gut one of the nation's single-biggest efforts against climate change. A leaked version of the final rule shows the administration watering down an Obama mileage standard that would have encouraged automakers globally to ramp up production of electric vehicles and more fuel-efficient gasoline vehicles.
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Gas is cheap, but for many motorists there's nowhere to go
DALLAS (AP) — Some service stations in the U.S. are selling gasoline for 99 cents a gallon, prices not seen in about two decades. Gasoline prices have collapsed because demand for oil is way down due to the coronavirus outbreak. Normally motorists would cheer about cheap gas at the pump, but instead they are under orders to stay home, and they're worried about their jobs. Price-tracking services say the national national average is around $2 a gallon but it's falling fast.
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Conditions for companies that get virus aid: Room for abuse?
WASHINGTON (AP) — A $500 billion federal aid package for companies and governments hurt by the coronavirus includes rules aimed at ensuring that the taxpayer money is used in ways that would help sustain the economy. But questions are being raised about whether those guardrails will prevent the kinds of abuses that have marked some corporate bailouts of the past.
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Some Instacart, Amazon workers strike as jobs get riskier
NEW YORK (AP) — Some Instacart and Amazon warehouse workers have walked off the job to demand greater safeguards against the coronavirus, even as both companies are speed-hiring hundreds of thousands of new workers to handle a surge in delivery orders. The one-day strikes likely had a limited impact on consumers, but the unrest called attention to mounting discontent among low-wage workers who are on the front lines of the pandemic, serving the needs of those who can keep safe working from home.
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The Standard & Poor's index rose 85.18 points, or 3.4%, to 2,626,65. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 690.70 points or 3.2%, to 22,327.48. The Nasdaq tacked on 271.77, or 3.6%, to 7,774.15. The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks gained 26.33 points, or 2.3%, to 1,158,32.