Grim Economic Outlook Grips Markets as Stocks Plummet

Challenger Gray Christmas, an outplacement firm that tracks layoffs, said it had seen only a relative handful of coronavirus-related layoffs so far.

“We anticipate more to come,” said Andrew Challenger, the firm’s vice president. Many probably won’t be announced and will be hard to track, at least in real-time, he said. “But they will definitely start happening fairly quickly.”

Some businesses are improvising. Starbucks is eliminating seating at all of its company-owned stores in the United States for at least the next two weeks to encourage social distancing. McDonald’s company-owned restaurants will close seating areas and shift to serving customers through drive-through, takeout and delivery. Stop Shop stores will open earlier, 6 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. daily, to serve only customers who are age 60 and over.

And others are planning to keep their doors open, including a few retailers. Home Depot, which employs about 400,000 people at roughly 2,200 stores in the United States, was also open for business on Monday. Lowe’s, another big home improvement chain, said all of its more than 1,700 stores were open for business.

UPS, which employs some 413,000 people in the United States, was still processing packages and sending trucks for deliveries. Merck, the pharmaceutical company, was continuing to produce and distribute drugs from facilities spread out across nine states.

Amazon will hire more workers and raise pay as delivery orders surge.

Amazon said it would hire 100,000 new workers and raise pay by $2 an hour for many employees in response to a surge in delivery orders from people staying at home to combat the spread of the coronavirus.

Amazon said the 100,000 new jobs would include both full and part-time positions across the United States to staff its warehouses and make deliveries. The company encouraged people who lost work as a result of coronavirus-related shutdowns and cancellations to apply.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/business/stock-market-drops-recap.html