Live Stock Market Tracker and Updates During Coronavirus Pandemic

The jobs report from the Labor Department comes out Friday morning. It’s often a good indicator of the direction of the economy, though this month’s will offer an outdated snapshot because it will be based on surveys conducted before the nation’s business shutdown kicked into full gear.

The big headline jobs number is expected on Thursday, when the government will announce the number of people across the country who filed for initial unemployment benefits last week. In the week before, nearly 3.3 million claims were filed, a record by a long shot.

The week will also see the release of information about the American manufacturing sector, which most economists think is contracting again after briefly rebounding earlier this year.

Catch up: Here’s what else is happening.

• American Media Inc., the publisher of The National Enquirer, Men’s Journal, Us Weekly and other titles, is cutting the pay of its employees more than 20 percent. It’s the latest instance of a media company trying to slim down. Last week, BuzzFeed announced temporary payroll cuts.

• Americans are stress-buying all of the baby chickens.

• The Australian government announced a wage subsidy plan on Monday that will pay businesses roughly 70 percent of the median wage to prevent millions of workers from losing their jobs because of the coronavirus outbreak.

Reporting was contributed by Stanley Reed, Kenneth P. Vogel, Alexandra Stevenson, Tiffany May, Derrick Bryson Taylor, Damien Cave, Edmund Lee, Marc Tracy, Nicholas Kulish, Sarah Kliff, Jessica Silver-Greenberg, Daniel Victor and Carlos Tejada.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/business/coronavirus-stock-markets-economy.html