The Week in Business: Jobs Are Up, Beef Is Down

Good morning and happy first week of June. Here’s what you need to know for the week ahead in business and tech news. — Charlotte Cowles

What’s Up? (May 30-June 5)

Jobs Return, Gradually

The Labor Department’s latest jobs report showed that the United States added 559,000 jobs in May, roughly doubling the growth recorded in April and bringing the unemployment rate down to 5.8 percent, from 6.1 percent the previous month. That’s good news for the economic recovery, but some would say not good enough. Employment is still well below prepandemic levels, and many employers are struggling to fill open positions, particularly those for in-person work. Some economists believe that expanded unemployment benefits are a disincentive for taking jobs. And most predict that the economy won’t stabilize until those benefits end in the fall, when schools fully reopen and more people are vaccinated.

Extra Butter

It was another wild week for meme stocks as retail investors once again flocked to down-and-out companies like BlackBerry, GameStop and — most notably — AMC Entertainment. The beleaguered movie theater chain, which almost went bankrupt a few months ago, promised free popcorn to shareholders and proceeded to sell half a billion dollars in new shares on Thursday. The company admitted that its surging market value did not reflect the state of its actual business, and warned investors that they risked “losing all or a substantial portion” of their money. But that didn’t seem to dissuade the traders who have teamed up to boost its stock price by more than 500 percent over the past month.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/business/the-week-in-business-jobs.html