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Reopenings are reversing |
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As coronavirus cases surge to yet more highs, U.S. cities, states and companies are increasingly changing course on reopening, threatening what was emerging as a fragile economic recovery. |
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Nearly 50,000 Covid-19 cases were reported in the U.S. yesterday, the fifth record set in eight days. Three states suffered new highs as well, prompting more rollbacks: |
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• New York City reversed plans to let indoor dining at restaurants resume, while Miami Beach reinstated a nightly curfew. California shut down bars and indoor restaurant dining for most of its residents. |
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• McDonald’s paused plans to reopen more of its restaurants for 21 days, while Citigroup delayed the reopening of offices in 13 states. |
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• The halt in reopenings has led to a dispiriting trend: workers who were rehired, only to be laid off again. |
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All of that threatens America’s economic comeback, which The Times’s Jim Tankersley and Ben Casselman note had already begun to slow. Minutes from the last meeting of Fed officials, released yesterday, show pessimism within the central bank about the nation’s economic outlook, including fears of more businesses failing and consumer spending faltering. |
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• We’ve talked before about the potential shape of an economic recovery, with options including a V (a swift bounceback) and a W (growth, then another dip). At the moment, The Wall Street Journal’s Greg Ip writes, the economy appears to resemble the reverse of a square root symbol — that is, an initial rebound followed by a long plateau. |
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Europe may be faring better than the U.S. this time around. The Times’s Steve Erlanger notes that America had tended to recover more quickly from disaster, including the 2008 financial crisis, thanks to quick government responses and more flexible labor policies. But Europe’s approach of decisive and lengthy economic freezes coupled with enormous government support may prove the more effective course of action. |
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Today’s DealBook Briefing was written by Andrew Ross Sorkin in Connecticut and Michael J. de la Merced and Jason Karaian in London. |
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Elaine Thompson/Associated Press |
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The messy jobs numbers |
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It’s a big day for jobs data, with the Labor Department scheduled to release both monthly payroll data and weekly unemployment claims at 8:30 a.m. Eastern. One thing is certain: Expect a lot of unruly data. |
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Economists expect the U.S. to have added three million jobs last month, according to a survey by Bloomberg, in what would be the second month of gains. (The monthly report is coming out a day early, since the markets are closed tomorrow because of Independence Day.) And the unemployment rate is expected to drop to 12.5 percent, from 13 percent. |
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• Data from ADP, the payroll processor, released yesterday showed that private-company payrolls had risen by 2.4 million. |
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Meanwhile, economists expect 1.35 million to have filed jobless claims last week, which would represent a 13th consecutive weekly decline. Bloomberg notes that such a figure is still six times pre-pandemic levels. |
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But people are on guard for noise in the data. Expect angst over continued misclassification errors, in which workers were labeled as employed but on leave when they should have been designated unemployed or on furlough. That issue dogged the May jobs report. |
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• To make things more confusing, correcting the error could produce a June jobless rate number that’s higher than May’s — even though unemployment actually fell last month. |
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Mark Zuckerberg Andreas Gebert/Reuters |
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How much will Mark Zuckerberg give up? |
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The Facebook chief plans to meet with the civil rights groups that have organized the ever-growing ad boycott of the tech giant’s platforms over permissive policies toward hate speech and calls to violence. |
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Mr. Zuckerberg and two top lieutenants will meet with the organizations to discuss ending the boycott, which has grown to over 500 companies. An official at one of the groups, Color for Change, told Bloomberg that the coalition was hopeful “ that he will finally hear our real concerns about how the platform is operating.” |
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But he may not feel a need to make bold promises. At a town hall with employees last week, Mr. Zuckerberg saw the boycott as a “reputational and a partner issue,” not a serious financial one, according to The Information. (The big advertisers that have garnered headlines constitute a fraction of Facebook’s overall ad revenue.) |
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• “We’re not going to change our policies or approach on anything because of a threat to a small percent of our revenue, or to any percent of our revenue,” he added. |
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Shareholders appear to be siding with him. Facebook’s stock rose nearly 5 percent yesterday, the third straight day of gains. At $237.55, that isn’t too far from a 52-week high. |
