It's crunch time:
"Black Friday plus COVID-19 add up to crunch time for retailers" by Jordyn Holman and Kim Bhasin Bloomberg, November 16, 2020
(Bloomberg) — The formula for retailers on Black Friday is usually pretty simple: Cut prices, stock shelves, prepare for crowds, and make sure orders arrive on time. This year — like everything in 2020 — it’s anything but.
America’s biggest apparel retailers and department stores are anxious ahead of the crucial holiday period. That’s because all the new tools they’ve hastily rolled out and scaled up amid the global pandemic, like in-store and curbside pickup and direct shipping from stores, haven’t really been battle-tested. So if they fail, an already disastrous year could get that much worse.
“These companies are used to somewhat regular patterns,” said David Silverman, a retail analyst at Fitch Ratings Inc. “All of that has gone out of the window.”
Data show companies have cause for concern. Shares of Amazon and essential retailers like Target and Walmart have gained this year, while department stores and apparel chains have slumped amid declining sales.
Related: Like a Thief in the Night
Who benefitted?
Additionally, consumer habits are changing dramatically during the pandemic, and many industry observers say that shifts toward e-commerce and socially distanced shopping methods could be permanent. So if shoppers don’t have a good experience, retailers risk losing them for good.
It's being engineered to be just that by the Davo$ crowd as represented by the WEF and the Great Re$et project.
Department stores in particular want to keep shoppers happy. It’s been one of the worst performing areas in retail, and Macy’s and Kohl’s — both of which report earnings this week — have shed more than $7 billion in market value this year. The mandatory lockdowns erased millions in sales earlier this year.
That is how you de$troy independent business and impoverish a people in favor of a dystopian medical technocracy enforced with totalitarian state tyranny.
Big-box stores Walmart and Target, which have benefitted from pantry loading this year, also report quarterly results this week. The latest round of disclosures is expected to shed light on how retailers are handling shipping and higher demand in the final weeks of 2020.
Meet your communi$t oligarchs providing necessities.
Companies should be ready for a flood of shoppers picking up orders, both inside stores and outside in the parking lot. Analysts at Adobe Analytics expect pickup lines to lengthen as Christmas approaches and usage of pickup options to spike 40 percent compared to last year, surpassing standard mail shipping as the most popular buying option.
From where will the $$$ come?
I can't afford Chri$tma$ this year.
At the same time, higher levels of e-commerce will strain traditional carriers like FedEx and United Parcel Service, which retailers fear may limit shipping capacity from stores as orders ramp up.
See: "United Parcel Service shares tumbled more than 8 percent as investors looked past surging sales to focus on rising costs. Profit margins will be pressured this quarter as the company accelerates investment to speed deliveries and absorbs increasedexpenses to handle peak-season volume, UPS said as it reported third-quarter results. Benefits, incentive pay, and other items will create additional drag of $300 million or more. UPS’s sales have soared as consumers turn to online shopping rather than risk going to stores during the pandemic, but, the package courier’s costs have climbed from efforts to protect workers and because of the jump in residential deliveries. The Atlanta-based company earns more from commercial customers because more packages are left at each stop."
I will just leave it there.
Roadie, a crowd-sourced last-mile delivery platform that works with companies like Walmart, Home Depot, and Tractor Supply, has been getting more calls from retailers asking for help to fulfill same-day orders. It now works with an additional 5,000 store locations — up more than 250 percent since the start of the pandemic.
“You will see a pretty large clog in the system once you get past Thanksgiving,” chief executive Marc Gorlin said. “The burden is on retailers.”
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Related:
Retailers hold out hope on busiest shopping day of the year
I'm told Black Friday is still critical even after it has already been declared dead by the Globe.
A Target employee handed a customer a curbside pickup purchase (Rogelio V. Solis/Associated Press)
Can they make it any clearer as to where this is all headed under the rubric of the COVID-19 $CAM?
I know it is long and will put you to sleep, but.... it took four hours to prepare.
"Perhaps more than ever, online shopping is changing the seasonal workforce in 2020; Holiday retail jobs are shifting toward deliveries, e-commerce, and in-store pickups" by Janelle Nanos Globe Staff, November 24, 2020
It’s a tradition for the ages: As the year-end shopping season kicks off, retailers across the country announce plans for seasonal hiring, bringing on a temporary workforce to help manage the holiday crush, but like everything else in 2020, seasonal retail jobs are undergoing pandemic disruptions.
Or at least 50 years since malls showed up, that's their "tradition for the ages."
The stuff is becoming more insulting by the day, and I didn't think that was possible.
Job well done! Thank you.
Last year, Macy’s announced it would bring on 80,000 holiday employees; that number dropped to 25,000 this year. J.C. Penney hired 37,000 in 2019; this year it’s only hiring 1,700. Seasonal gigs at big-box stores will increasingly involve packing orders for pickups or shipping them to customer’s homes, while transportation, logistics, and warehousing jobs are anticipated to triple this year as consumers conquer their gift lists online.
Meanwhile, at independent storefronts, shop owners are pulling back on seasonal hiring — why have more bodies in your store when you have limits on headcounts? — and are just hoping to survive the holiday season.
They won't because that is what the plan calls for.
“The biggest question for [retailers] is, has the pandemic fundamentally and permanently changed people’s shopping patterns?” said Andrew Challenger, senior vice president of the job placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
We are being FORCED to do it over the FRAUD that is COVID!
As retailers have started their holiday promotions earlier this year to cut down on crowding in stores, those part-time seasonal hires happened earlier than usual. Many industry watchers are hoping the jobs may help stimulate a stronger recovery and turn into long-term positions for those currently out of work.
“We have really seen the acceleration in jobs and hiring, and we anticipate that to continue as things move forward,” said Jack Kleinhenz, chief economist for the National Retail Federation.
Much of the seasonal hiring reflects the shifts already well underway since the pandemic started, with many traditional retailers maneuvering their employees into new roles as more shoppers moved online.
This is beyond a viru$ or di$ea$e at this point, and about the "con$piracy" that is a known $ecret.
Retailers have also been ramping up their hiring in transportation, warehouse, and logistics jobs as they anticipate more online ordering than ever before. Adobe estimates that holiday e-commerce sales will increase 33 percent this year, accounting for a total of $189 billion. So for companies like Amazon that have seen record profits during the pandemic — the company tripled its profits to $6.3 billion in the third quarter, up from $2.1 billion during the same period last year — bringing on more bodies to fulfill those orders will be critical. This fall, the company announced plans to hire 100,000 seasonal workers.
Cha-CHINGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!
Cui bono?
Walmart is also bringing on 20,000 hires to run “pop-up” fulfillment centers for e-commerce orders out of the distribution centers that usually ship pallets of products to stores. Meanwhile, the companies delivering all those packages are bulking up their teams: FedEx is bringing on 70,000 holiday workers, up from 55,000 last year, and UPS plans to add 100,000 jobs, up from 95,000.
This as Mom and Pop and small businesses that provide the same services were called non-essential and shut down.
That's where they are pushing this, folks. They want to test, trace, track, and vaccinate forever with you stuck at home forever.
All told, the number of transportation, logistics, and warehouse jobs is poised to triple this year, said Challenger. “There’s an enormous amount of activity,” he said. “These companies had been hiring already prior to the holiday season due to the pandemic. The fact that they’re expecting an even bigger bump is really telling.”
It certainly is!
Workers’ rights advocates are quick to point out that while many retailers have reported record profits during the pandemic and are staffing up for the fourth quarter to earn even more, some of the largest employers, including Amazon and Walmart, have stopped offering hazard pay to workers. They argue that with a second virus surge well underway, those profits should be funneled back into the workforce.
If they are going to throw in with this fraud for the advantage of payoff, what good are they?
“They may say, ‘We’re all in this together,’ but too many big retailers are prioritizing maximizing profits over paying their frontline workers,” Rick Claypool, research director at Public Citizen, said in a report released last week, and amid the holiday hiring scramble, independent brick and mortar retailers are bracing for a difficult season. Back in February, Gary Drinkwater’s sales at his eponymous Cambridge menswear shop were at 72 percent of his projected revenue for the year, enough that he brought on an additional part-time salesperson. “We were going gangbusters,” he said.
Then the pandemic hit. For the past several months, as sales have trickled in, his employees have been keeping busy photographing inventory to add to his relaunched website. (He’s planning to add a new category soon: “dressing from the waist up.”)
I just read that last bit with such sadness.
Trump's economy was going gangbusters and life was good, and now it's $hit and about to get $hittier before turning into a totally unholy hell.
So there was no reason to consider additional seasonal help this year, he said, particularly given the current headcount restrictions placed on retail stores, and while he thought about hosting a holiday shopping event, he can only have eight people in the store at a time, including him and his salesperson.
“We can only have six other people – what if 10 showed up?” Drinkwater said. “That wouldn’t be good.”
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What is good is the Globe workers are still locked in tough contract negotiations with the boss as Globe management attempts to break their union.
Now try this one for $ize:
"More and more Bostonians struggle to feed themselves as a resurgent pandemic approaches; Citywide need for food stamps has jumped more than 20 percent" by Katharine Swindells Globe correspondent, November 26, 2020
The pandemic has only made worse existing inequality in access to healthy food that people with low income face. During the worst of the outbreak, families who live far from big grocery stores had to turn to expensive corner markets with less, if any, fresh food or risk riding public transportation during the pandemic.
The current spike of coronavirus cases could be even worse for food insecure families than the spring, experts say — at least economically. Government stimulus checks have long since dried up, and the winter weather likely will bring another spate of unemployment. Advocates for the most vulnerable fear food pantry shutdowns, like those seen in the spring, and crucially, advocates said, public support has dwindled.
Famine is a planned part of the Great Re$et, along with power outrages this winter, and such nefarious and evil plans beg the question of how do you want to die?
That is the question that will soon confront all of us, including the enforcers they send out who won't return home.
Laura Cowie-Haskell, a volunteer for mutual aid group Roslindale Cares, said dwindling support forced the group to end one of its programs, which gave grocery store gift cards to people in need.
At the high point, Cowie-Haskell said, they were distributing gift cards for $75 to $100 to as many as 30 families around Roslindale every week, but they ended the program because there weren’t enough donations.
“It just sort of tapered off,” she said. “I guess they just thought people didn’t need money or food anymore,” but that is far from the truth. An examination of state data shows applications for SNAP increased in every ZIP code across Boston, but there were much higher increases in the city’s lowest income neighborhoods. Take the 02116 ZIP code, and by contrast, in the 02121 ZIP code.
What is far from the truth is the daily illusion known as the Globe, and the implication in her in$ulting statement is a guilt trip regarding lack of donations when the very people making donations now find themselves in line for food.
The money has been gobbled up by the likes of Gates, Amazon, Walmart, and other going concerns of the elite who are profiting from the planned $camdemic.
Now, as winter approaches, the latest state data show some neighborhoods, such as Dorchester and Roxbury, are seeing a second increase in SNAP recipients after a summer when the numbers declined.
Groceries are expensive in Eastern Massachusetts — 24 percent more expensive than the national average, according to a 2019 report from Feeding America. Partly as a result, Massachusetts has seen the highest percentage increase of residents facing food insecurity of all states, according to the advocacy group Feeding America.
Why the price gouging in Bo$ton?
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, benefits [are] monthly payments for low-income people that can be spent on groceries, average $210 a month, and they can mean the difference between eating and going hungry for many people.
Let me tell you something, $50 a week doesn't buy much these days!
You may not be starving, but take it from me, you are STILL HUNGRY!
Oh, to gorge on the buffets of the ruling cla$$ someday, 'eh?
Elderly residents and people with disabilities or preexisting conditions already are more likely to rely on SNAP, but one-third of recipients are from working families. SNAP recipients in Massachusetts also are more likely to be Black, Hispanic, or people of color — groups disproportionately affected by COVID-19.
There goes the pre$$ again, bringing a divisive identity wedge issue into the equation when we are all getting f**ked.
To be sure, SNAP data only tells part of the story, and in some areas, such as East Boston and Roslindale, the severity of the food security issue might be underrepresented because some residents can’t access welfare due to their immigration status.
Yes, "to be sure" -- which basically means ignore everything beforehand and the point they were making, thus outing this as agenda-pushing propaganda.
Cowie-Haskell from Roslindale Cares said she is particularly worried about undocumented immigrants, who sometimes don’t access community support services due to fear of retribution.
Of course, that's the Globe's MOP. They care more about the undocumented immigrants than actual citizens, and it's di$gu$ting as well as part of the power grab toward one-party tyranny.
“Some of those people won’t come out to a service if they don’t know who’s running it,” she said, “and they’re already not getting the meager government assistance. I don’t know how they’re surviving.”
Mitch Hopperstad, a volunteer at Faith Pentecostal church, said he is worried that if COVID-19 cases continue to rise in Boston, many food pantries will have to close like they did in the spring to protect elderly volunteers, which would be devastating for people who depend on them even more in the pandemic.
You want to eat?
You will have to take the vaccine. That is the system they are constructing as the lying pre$$ screams casedemic and you are shutdown.
For those on SNAP, initiatives like the Healthy Incentives Program, which offers money back when buying produce at farmer’s markets, can be helpful, but going into winter, the majority have closed.
Others say that low-income working people struggle to take advantage of the food pantry system.
“A lot of folks are working multiple jobs, and the food pantries typically are [open] during the day when a lot of these folks are working,” said Amanda Trombley, marketing manager at Food for Free, a Cambridge organization providing food to locations across Cambridge and Boston.
They are working multiple jobs in this economy, and if so, they can't afford food?
What about all of us permanently out of work now and prematurely draining down our retirements?
Those hardest hit financially during the pandemic also live in neighborhoods where people do a significant amount of their shopping at convenience stores because of a lack of access to groceries.
Mohammed Alazad, who owns MaMa Supermarket, a small corner store on Blue Hill Avenue in Mattapan, said he saw an increase in profits from March through June, with customers choosing to do much more of their food shopping at his store. The nearest large grocery store is a mile away, so many would have to take public transport to get there, plus, his prices are slightly cheaper than a convenience store, and he stocks a small produce selection. Alazad said he also saw an increase in people using EBT and SNAP, which he said now comprises almost half his sales.
Yes, the state of public transportation in Ma$$achu$etts is a me$$.
MaMa Supermarket sells some fresh food, but this isn’t true for many small stores. Fresh produce is much harder to store, and before March, there was less demand, but when state and local governments restricted movement in the spring, many people found themselves without an option near their home to buy fresh food.
Imagine what will happen when grocery stores are closed.
The 47,500 people who live in ZIP code 02124, which includes half of Blue Hill Avenue and the Codman Square and Ashmont areas of Dorchester, know very well about lack of access to fresh food. The entire neighborhood has only two large grocery stores. That’s one grocery store for about every 23,800 people.
By comparison, Allston has four large grocery stores to serve a much smaller population, which translates to one store for every 5,800 people.
“There’s a long history in this part of Boston, particularly in Dorchester and Roxbury, that there are no grocery stores,” said Bruce Shatswell, a historian of the area. “Most of these places don’t sell fresh produce, so [they’re] not only a food desert, but a desert of produce.”
Joy Gary, a food access advocate who sits on the Boston Food Access Council, said it’s not fair that people who have the least should have to travel so far to meet their food needs.
“I personally will travel, you know, five, six, maybe 10 or 20 miles to be able to get really good food, but not everyone can do that and not everyone will do that,” she said, “and realistically, we shouldn’t have to do that.”
He realistically bit off more than he could chew there because we shouldn't have to be doing any of what we are doing, including masks and distancing. It's all been discredited in the wider world, even if the Globe omits and ignores it.
In May, the state allowed people to use SNAP benefits online in an effort to make it easier for low-income families to buy groceries, but the option is limited to two vendors: Amazon and Walmart.
We know about them from the article above, and I don't want to type with my mouth full.
The city also has stepped in to provide additional funding to existing services, including food pantries and organizations such as Fair Foods, which sells produce rejected by supermarkets for $2 a bag in low-income areas, but advocates said these resources are Band-Aids over deeper problems, including housing insecurity, child care, and unemployment.
“It’s not that food isn’t available, it’s that people don’t have any money,” said Nancy Jamison, who founded Fair Foods in 1988. “So until we start sharing money, we’ll keep making up new words and new phrases, and the only problem is, there’s no money.”
The $tinking city is having revenue problems of its own, and I gue$$ you will have to go beg from Amazon and hope they will "share money."
Citywide, the number of people receiving SNAP benefits has increased by 21.2 percent since the pandemic began, food stamp data show, outpacing the statewide SNAP increase of 15.9 percent, but food insecurity is concentrated in low-income neighborhoods, including one ZIP code in Roxbury where over half of residents now rely on food stamps.
That’s the reality for thousands of families in Boston as the economic and health ravages of the pandemic, combined with food price increases, have produced a rising tide of food insecurity.....
Not called hunger anymore, that would be politically incorrect.
Isn't it great that the insulting elite and their mouthpieces in the media are so sensitive to our feelings?
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{@@##$$%%^^&&}
I should be fa$ting from the Globe in preparation of the Hunger Games rather than marching in a parade:
"Here’s what the Thanksgiving Day parade looked like in pandemic New York" by The New York Times November 26, 2020
NEW YORK — It’s a yearly Thanksgiving Day tradition: Millions of spectators crammed onto long city blocks, hanging over barricades and balconies or pressed against the windows of towering office buildings to watch giant balloons, depicting cartoon characters like Pikachu, hovering just a few feet above the street, but this year, as with everything in 2020, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, a ritual marker of the holiday, was drastically different.
Because of the threat of the coronavirus, much of the parade in Manhattan was scaled down and pretaped for the television airing. The route was reduced from two miles to a single block down 34th Street, near the flagship department store.
???????
It wasn't live like usual?
Related:
Could we literally be embarking on an era when where Biden could die but still continue?
How long until we are literally in the Matrix, if we are not already, with virtual reality, the Great Re$et, and fused biohumanism being prepared for us?
There will literally never be a need to leave the "home," right?
There were no high school bands. Instead of the usual 2,000 balloon handlers, there were only about 130.
Warnings from officials to stay home because of the pandemic kept millions indoors this year, and police barricades were put in place to ensure that nobody got too close.
Still, some spectators were curious and showed up anyway.
To see what?
On 34th Street and Fifth Avenue, Karin Schlosser, 52, stood behind one of the barricades taking photos of the floats and balloons. The balloons this year included the characters Boss Baby and Red Titan from “Ryan’s World.”
“I felt like it was a big adventure to just come on down here and see what I could see — and I actually saw much more than I expected to see,” said Schlosser, who is from California but is living in New York City for a month while working from home. “This is so amazing.”
“I think people still really need some sense of normalcy,” she added. “Everyone I’ve talked to is very aware of the pandemic. They want to be safe. They’re wearing masks, but they still want to connect with other people.”
So says Schlosser(!), according to the New York Times.
Dozens gathered at the same corner shortly after 9 a.m. taking photos with their cellphones. A man with a woman snapped a selfie with Christmas floats in the background. Absent in the photograph was the usual crowd of thousands.
Across the street, a building remained boarded up from the days when owners had braced for unrest after the election results. Police barricades kept the public at least two blocks away from the staging area. The streets beyond the parade route remained largely empty.
They stole the election from Trump and his supporters didn't destroy a thing, and that $tinking city is not only a $hell of itself, it is a haunted hulk of a carca$$.
Henry Danner, of the Bronx, recalled going to the parade with his family as a child and watching his cousins perform in marching bands. This year, Danner, 34, a freelance photographer and journalism student at Columbia University, said he was most interested in witnessing and documenting what it was like to attend a parade during a pandemic.
“The Thanksgiving parade is a staple in New York history,” Danner said. “I came to see what story I could capture. I knew New York was going to be New York and still come out,” but much about the annual event was different, he said.
“The energy is very somber,” Danner said. “It’s usually upbeat.”
I'm sick of $elf-$erving slop and sourcing, sorry.
Kaitlin Lawrence, 31, and Zeev Kirsh, 40, tried to inject the event with a little levity when they decided to attend the parade in turkey costumes. Lawrence merged her two favorite holidays: Thanksgiving and Christmas. She dressed as a turkey-Santa.
“We are die-hard New Yorkers, and we want to keep the magic alive,” Lawrence said.
It's already gone (frown).
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Related:
"Macy’s swung to a loss and sales tumbled 22 percent as the department store chain struggled to bring shoppers back to stores during a pandemic, but the beleaguered retailer did better than most had expected because it was able to get its customers thinking about holiday shopping early for safety reasons and to avoid the expected shipping crush this year. Macy’s had a loss of $91 million, or 29 cents per share in the quarter ended Oct. 31. That compares with a profit of $2 million, or a penny per share in the year ago period. Sales fell to $3.99 billion in the quarter compared with $5.17 billion in the year ago period. Online sales rose 27 percent. Like most retail stores, Macy’s was forced to close its stores during the spring to curb the spread of the coronavirus and sales evaporated. The New York company furloughed a majority of its employees. Macy’s began reopening its store in May but the recovery has been slow, and it needs to acclimate to a trying business climate that has tipped other iconic chains into bankruptcy protection this year."
Also see:
Another tradition upended by the pandemic was the Annual Turkey Trot in Bo$ton, where Kate Maul was isolating from others as she and her children were waiting for results from COVID-19 tests so they could celebrate Thanksgiving together.
That marches you right into this:
"Northeastern study reveals racial disparities in navigating the pandemic" by Laura Krantz Globe Staff, November 26, 2020
Systemic inequality in Boston has forced Black and Latinx residents with lower incomes to expose themselves to the COVID-19 virus at disproportionate rates, a new study from researchers at Northeastern University has found.
I'm of the belief now that this is all preconceived propaganda for the usual divisive purposes.
Because of disparities in employment, food access, transportation, and physical activity, those in neighborhoods of color and low-income areas suffered greater exposure to the virus than people in whiter, wealthier neighborhoods, the new study found.
Exposure, but not infection?
Much research has occurred nationwide over the past year about the disproportionate effect of the virus on communities of color and low-income populations. Data from the Centers for Disease Control show the rate of infection among Black and Latinx persons is more than 2.5 times higher than for whites, and the rate of hospitalizations and deaths is also much higher.
Of course, the death rates are disproportionately the elderly with co-morbidities but why bring that up, right?
Daniel O’Brien, a public policy and urban affairs professor at Northeastern who led the study said the report’s findings should propel public officials and community organizations to realize that the challenges facing different neighborhoods and populations are unique and serve as a road map to ensure that those communities receive additional support during the second wave of the virus.
There is no second wave.
It's all lies based on false positive, non-infectious results and its promotion by the pre$$ makes them criminal collaborators in this massive fraud being foisted on the people.
“Each community got hit differently,” he said. “As we’re looking for the second wave coming up right now, we are going to need targeted solutions.”
That should send a shudder up your spine.
The study was a partnership between professors at Northeastern, UMass Boston, and the Boston Public Health Commission. Researchers surveyed approximately 1,600 Bostonians from across the city about their habits in April and in July regarding their ability to follow social distancing guidelines and about the economic and personal damage they suffered.
The report focused on routine activities including commuting to work, accessing food, using public transit, and exercising.
This where the study gets "interesting."
Black and Latinx residents and those with lower incomes were more likely to have to physically go to work, with nearly a third working fully in person in April, compared to fewer than 15 percent of white and Asian respondents, the survey found.
O’Brien said if front-line workers are required to go to work, government officials could set up a testing regimen to help keep them safe.
You see where this is going!
Endless testing, tracing, tracing, and vaccinations based on an alleged virus that has a survival rate of 99.99% and where you are so sick you need a faulty and flawed test to tell you so.
These people are EVIL, folks.
Northeastern, for example, has set up a massive testing and tracing system that has allowed many people to return to campus safely. If front-line workers had access to equally frequent testing, he said, they could be less vulnerable.
“If we can’t tell people in these sectors, ‘We can help you work from home,’ how do we make working outside the home safer?” he said.
Going to be less of those if certain people have their way:
"In some US cities, about half the workforce is still working remotely almost nine months into the coronavirus pandemic, according to a survey by the US Census Bureau. Across the United States, 37 percent of employees were teleworking between late October and early November, according to the bureau’s Household Pulse Survey. The rates can vary widely by state and city, depending on factors such as the type of jobs, workplace polices, and government restrictions. In tech-heavy San Francisco, 56.2 percent of workers said they were doing their jobs remotely. Companies such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Facebook Inc., and Amazon.com Inc. have announced they will let employees work remotely into 2021. In the nation’s capital area, where Amazon is establishing a second headquarters, the federal government is also allowing for flexible work arrangements. About 55.6 percent of those surveyed in Washington, D.C., reported they were teleworking. The share of adults in Boston, Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, and Atlanta who say they were working from home ranged from 45 percent to 55 percent. Lower earners typically didn’t have the same flexibility as higher earners. More than 61 percent of households taking in more than $75,000 a year said they were able to substitute telecommuting for some in-person work, compared with about 21 percent of households earning less than $75,000. The divide is also geographical. In the poorest state, Mississippi, the percentage of adults teleworking at least part of the time was just 21 percent, compared with more than half of adults in more affluent Massachusetts and Colorado."
You will never be coming back to the office:
"PayPal Holdings Inc. employees will probably spend more time working from home even after the coronavirus pandemic is over. The company envisions the vast majority of staffers splitting their time between working from home and from one of the company’s offices, chief executive Dan Schulman said in a Bloomberg Television interview. The firm employed about 23,200 people globally at the end of last year, with almost half based in the United States. “I don’t think we’re ever going back to what was,” Schulman said. “Some people will forever be at home, and others will be more in the office, but the vast majority will be some kind of three-two hybrid,” he said, referring to the number of days spent working from each place. Promising COVID-19 vaccine trials have prompted many employers to begin weighing how they’ll ultimately return workers to offices after sending them home in droves earlier this year to stem the virus’s spread."
PayPal is giving bonu$es and waiving fees to those who stay home because they are more productive, and after a survey found employees want to work from home — but not all the time.
This was NEVER ABOUT A FAKE VIRUS THAT HAS NEVER BEEN ISOLATED and thus doesn't even exist!
This was about the TOTAL REDESIGN of LIFE per the TOTALITARIAN PSYCHOPATHS in Davos and elsewhere, with political and institutional puppets all throwing in.
The study also found that lower-income residents took on more risk to access food during the pandemic. While some higher-income residents ordered food or grocery delivery, offloading some of their exposure risk to front-line workers, lower-income people took more trips to the grocery store or food pantry.
O’Brien said lower-income residents may have made more trips to the grocery store because they lacked the funds to buy several weeks’ worth of food at once, or couldn’t carry extra bags home on public transit. Some might not live near a large grocery store and therefore made multiple trips to corner stores.
Setting up food carpools or informal delivery collaboratives among families with fewer resources might help minimize risk, he said.
You see where they are pushing things as they use the excuse of COVID as a cover to restrict access to food and create famine!
The study found that very few people reported using public transportation during those early months of the pandemic, but those who did were overwhelmingly from neighborhoods where people of color are the majority, including Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, and East Boston.
The study also asked Bostonians about their exercise habits during the pandemic. Researchers found that outdoor exercise was common in majority-white, low-density neighborhoods like Jamaica Plain, but rare in low-income areas where people of color are the majority. While exercise is not a necessity, O’Brien said, this finding could suggest that people in whiter, wealthier neighborhoods had more time and resources to ease the stress of the pandemic than those in lower-income areas.
“I hope that those who are serving those communities are able to glean what the needs of their specific constituency are, because it’s not the same inequity occurring everywhere,” he said.
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I'm sick of them singing the same old song, sorry.
"Stuck on campus, college students celebrate Thanksgiving on their own; No family? No problem" by Deanna Pan Globe Staff, November 26, 2020
Across the country, thousands of college students have decamped for Thanksgiving, despite warnings from public health officials, fearing their travels will accelerate the pace of contagion and cause more outbreaks upon their return. Others have stayed put.
If you "decamped," don't go back.
For Northeastern freshman Adri Lanza, Thanksgiving was an excuse to stay in and study. In lieu of traveling home to Philadelphia, the mechanical engineering major spent the holiday doing homework and preparing for midterms.
Northeastern is allowing students who travel to attend in-person classes after the break, but only if they quarantine first and test negative for the virus. With cases mounting, Lanza said staying in Massachusetts “seemed like a better idea.”
“We were thinking about trying to cook, but it just hasn’t really panned out too well, so it looks like we’re just going to be going to the dining hall and grabbing food from there,” Lanza said, with a hint of disappointment, of her Thanksgiving plans with her roommate. “I heard people say they have special desserts today like apple crisp or pumpkin pie so I’m looking forward to that if it’s true.”
Until Thursday, neither Boston College senior Adam Isaacs-Falbel, 21, a political science and philosophy major from Montpelier, Vt., nor his friend, Scott Baker, a senior from Cupertino, Calif., who lives in the dorm room next door, had ever roasted a whole bird.
“I’m definitely really bummed about missing my family Thanksgiving. It’s something I’ve been doing for literally as long as I can remember,” Isaacs-Falbel said, “but even in the planning of this meal together, I’ve kind of been getting more and more excited about it. For me, it’s somewhat of a test of ‘can I do this by myself?’ ”
Matthew Velazquez, 20, a junior at Northeastern University, hasn’t gone home to Houston, Texas, for Thanksgiving since attending college. The flights are just too expensive and Velazquez, a first-generation college student, can’t afford it. Normally, he’d celebrate the holiday with dozens of his Boston-area friends from EMERGE, a Houston-based college readiness program for high-achieving low-income students.
This Thanksgiving, he still gathered at an off-campus apartment with EMERGE friends, but in a much smaller group limited to Northeastern students. They all had to test negative for coronavirus before coming. Like Velazquez, most of the students he celebrated with are Latino. To honor his heritage, Velazquez made arroz con leche, Mexican rice pudding, for dessert. Velazquez said it was important to maintain the tradition, despite the pandemic.....
I don't get it because a New York Times piece recently said a negative coronavirus test does not mean you can safely socialize -- even though the tests are riddled with false positives and decades of immunity are conferred if infected.
--more--"
Well, this Thanksgiving is now part of history along with the page B4 photo of Masked Pilgrims at Mayflower Society House.
Related:
In Plymouth, the National Day of Mourning observed the harm Indigenous tribes suffered from settlers.
COVID-19 has also had a disproportionate impact on Native American communities, according to a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Whitey must be the only ones immune, along with the bank$ters and other ruling cla$$ elites, as the Globe hid that on page B5. Protests point out their hypocrisy so best to hide it, along with the photograph directly below that showed a baby male gorilla from the Franklin Park Zoo clinging to its mother and the car crash on the way home.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Time to open up that wallet:
"US jobless claims increase to 742,00 as pandemic worsens" by Christopher Rugaber Associated Press, November 19, 2020
WASHINGTON — The number of Americans seeking unemployment aid rose last week to 742,000, the first increase in five weeks and a sign that the resurgent viral outbreak is likely slowing the economy and forcing more companies to cut jobs.
The economy’s modest recovery is increasingly at risk, with newly confirmed daily infections in the United States having exploded 80 percent over the past two weeks to the highest levels on record. More states and cities are issuing mask mandates, limiting the size of gatherings, restricting restaurant dining, closing gyms, or reducing the hours and capacity of bars, stores, and other businesses. At least 15 states have tightened curbs on businesses to try to slow infections.
Evidence is emerging that consumers are losing confidence in the economic outlook and pulling back on shopping, eating out, and other activities. The number of people who are continuing to receive traditional unemployment benefits fell to 6.4 million, the government said, from 6.8 million. That shows that more Americans are finding jobs and no longer receiving unemployment aid, but it also indicates that many jobless people have used up their state unemployment aid — which typically expires after six months — and have transitioned to a federal extended benefits program that lasts 13 more weeks.
The worsening viral outbreak coincides with the impending expiration of two federal unemployment programs at year’s end that could eliminate benefits for 9.1 million people, according to a report from the Century Foundation. Congress has so far failed to agree on any new stimulus package for jobless individuals and struggling businesses. The cutoff of aid will sharply reduce income for the unemployed, force a further reduction in their spending, and perhaps weaken the economy.
One of those programs is Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, which made self-employed and contract workers eligible for unemployment aid for the first time. PUA was established by a multitrillion-dollar aid package that Congress enacted in the spring. The second measure in the stimulus package provided the additional 13 weeks of benefits for unemployed people who have used up their state benefits.
When those two programs expire on Dec. 26, the Century Foundation estimates that 12 million people will lose their benefits. About 2.9 million might be able to transition to a state extended benefit program that can last from six to 20 weeks, the report said, but the rest will lose benefits that average about $320 a week nationally.
The expiration of benefits will make it harder for the unemployed to make rent payments, afford food or keep up with utility bills. Most economists agree that because unemployed people tend to quickly spend their benefits, such aid is effective in boosting the economy.
This whole "debate" is in$ane.
Printed money being passed out isn't an economy, but the economi$ts act like it is.
The fact that bu$ine$$ isn't calling out the COVID fraud shows you how deep is the elite ruling cla$$ control.
Cutting off benefits with several million people still unemployed would be unusually early compared with previous recessions. In the Great Recession of 2008-2009, the government extended unemployment benefits to 99 weeks, and the additional aid lasted through 2013. When that program ended, about 1.3 million people lost benefits — a fraction of the number who would lose their aid at the end of this year.
“We’re still down 10 million jobs since the pandemic began,” said Elizabeth Pancotti, coauthor of the Century Foundation report and a policy adviser at Employ America, a left-leaning think tank. “We’re heading into the winter, we’re seeing additional business closures, consumer demand is already falling . . . Cutting off benefits seems inhumane to me.”
In March and April, when the pandemic erupted in the United States, tens of millions of people applied for jobless aid. Though many of them have been rehired or have landed new jobs, those who haven’t found work began exhausting their six months of state aid as early as September.
Most of them would then shift to the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, which provides 13 additional weeks, yet the Century Foundation estimates 3.5 million people will have used up all of those 13 weeks before the year ends. An additional 950,000 people will have run out of the 39 weeks provided by the PUA program by then, too.....
It's Biden's problem now, right?
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Related:
"The Massachusetts unemployment rate fell to 7.4 percent in October from a revised 9.8 percent in September as employers added jobs for a sixth straight month, the Baker administration said Friday. Employers in the state created 11,400 jobs last month, about a third of the revised 36,400 new hires in September, according to the Department of Unemployment Assistance. Gains were highest in the trade/transportation and professional/business services sectors, while the accommodation and food industry was flat. The government sector shed 4,200 jobs. Massachusetts has added back more than half of the 690,000 jobs that disappeared in March and April, and the unemployment rate has dropped from a pandemic peak of 17.7 percent in June, but the rate of job creation has slowed in each of the past four months, and claims for unemployment insurance show a pickup in layoffs as well as an increase in the ranks of the long-term unemployed. In another troubling sign, the October labor force decreased by 155,600 to 3.61 million, as many people without jobs gave up looking for work. The labor force participation rate, the share of the working-age population that is either employed or seeking a job, was down 2.8 percentage points over the month to 63.7 percent. Job gains are slowing across the country, as employers grow more cautious amid a record number of new COVID-19 cases and the failure of Congress to agree on additional economic stimulus. The national unemployment rate was 6.9 percent in October. Looming on the horizon is the end of two special federal unemployment programs: one covering gig workers and others not eligible for traditional state jobless benefits, the other providing 13 weeks of extra payments once a recipient’s state payments run out....."
So the REAL UNEMPLOYMENT RATE is a WHOPPING 36.3%, folks!
Good luck getting that claim proce$$ed:
Anything to keep your money from you in this mafia-like state:
"Governor Charlie Baker on Monday revealed that a very high percentage of claims filed last week for unemployment benefits failed to pass an initial screening, due to possible fraud. “There is a tremendous amount of bot-based fraud going on,” he said, referring to autonomous software programs that are able to interact online with systems and users. Baker’s comments came after a reporter asked about complaints of delays in collecting legitimate unemployment benefits, and were apparently intended to help explain at least one reason for those delays. It was not immediately clear how that number of possibly fraudulent claims compares to earlier weeks — whether the numbers cited by Baker represent a sudden spike or a continuation, for example — or how much fraud has been confirmed. It was also unclear how much the ongoing fraudulent claims may affect estimates of the state’s unemployment rate. Baker said that anyone with a legitimate claim who is having trouble accessing benefits should reach out to the DUA and to the governor’s office of constituent services. “Leave a message on our voice mail and we’ll follow up,” he said. The Baker administration has long acknowledged fraud as a major problem, though it has provided scant details. In July, the unemployment agency said it had verified that more than 58,000 claims were phony and that it had recovered $158 million...."
The Globe says the state owes us an explanation of jobless claims fraud, and one wonders if they have turned on King Charles:
UPDATE:
