About Those Job Numbers …

Over the past week, as protests spread from large cities to smaller towns, Corporate America weighed in with both money and messages expressing solidarity with the protesters.

Some companies have also begun to warn about social or civic unrest in their corporate filings:

• The video game retailer GameStop, which suffered looting in its stores in cities including Minneapolis and New York, warned about the impact of “social unrest” when it released quarterly earnings last Thursday. The company said that it had closed around 90 of the 3,500 stores that had reopened in the U.S. after loosening of pandemic lockdowns; 30 stores would remain closed for the “foreseeable future given extensive property damage.”

• Ollie’s Bargain Outlet, which runs 363 stores across the U.S., warned for the first time in a quarterly filing last week about the “inability to operate our stores due to civil unrest and related protests or disturbances.”

• RH, which operates about 100 Restoration Hardware stores, warned about “business disruption due to the recent civil unrest in many markets.”

In the past, warnings about civil unrest came mostly from multinationals with extensive international operations. These all came from companies whose operations are largely, or exclusively, in the U.S.

And it isn’t just retailers. Regions Financial, a bank based in Birmingham, Ala., that has nearly 1,500 branches in the South and Midwest, warned about “civil unrest” for the first time in a routine underwriting agreement it filed on Friday. The lawn care company Toro, which is based in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, warned last Thursday about “protests and/or social unrest” for the first time.

But with outbreaks of violence at demonstrations dropping sharply in recent days, these sorts of warnings may be outliers instead of a new routine.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/08/business/dealbook/jobs-numbers-fact-check.html