Business category, Page 3
Black Friday: What time do stores open?
Black Friday has become something of an anachronism in the e-commerce era. The day after Thanksgiving marks the official start of the holiday shopping season, but retailers already have spent weeks flooding their websites and customers’ email inboxes with early Black Friday offers. While sales trends have been shifting, the...
A welcome form of inflation: Balloons take shape for Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade
NEW YORK — Giant balloons got into shape Wednesday for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade as crews inflated the giant characters on the streets of New York City. The parade kicks off Thursday morning, with dozens of huge balloons set to take to the skies. Floats, entertainers, marching bands and...
Canada’s prime minister announces supports for lumber, steel sectors hit by U.S. tariffs
TORONTO — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Wednesday new supports for the steel and lumber industries hit hard by U.S. tariffs. U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed 50% tariffs on steel and softwood lumber, long subject to U.S. tariffs, is currently taxed at 45% after the Trump administration’s hike...
Layoffs are piling up, raising worker anxiety. Here are some companies that have cut jobs recently
NEW YORK — It’s a tough time to be looking for a job. Amid wider economic uncertainty, some analysts have said that businesses are at a “no-hire, no fire” standstill. That’s caused many to limit new work to only a few specific roles, if not pause openings entirely. At the...
Sellers in other countries struggle to maintain U.S. customers as holiday shopping season starts
NEW YORK — At Fleece & Harmony, a woolen mill and yarn shop in bucolic Belfast, Prince Edward Island, in Canada, owner Kim Doherty used to be able to send yarn skeins to U.S. customers across the border with little fanfare. The yarn orders usually met an import tax exemption...
Apple launches knitted pocket to hold iPhone
Apple launched a new accessory for iPhone this month — and it’s already sold out before the holidays. Called the “iPhone Pocket,” the product is a sock-looking sleeve that’s mean to carry people’s iPhones like a purse. It comes in long and short version. The pocket, which is made by...
Springdale data center developers hopeful ahead of vote, close on property with Charah
Brian Regli, a consultant for the company seeking to construct a large data center in Springdale, says he’s optimistic the project will be approved by borough council next month. Land developer Allegheny DC Property Co. wrapped up its testimony during a five-hour meeting Monday night. That came a week after...
Consumer confidence slides as Americans grow wary of high costs, sluggish job gains
WASHINGTON — U.S. consumers were much less confident in the economy in November in the aftermath of the government shutdown, weak hiring and stubborn inflation. The Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index dropped to 88.7 in November from an upwardly revised October reading of 95.5, the lowest...
New limits for rent algorithm that prosecutors say let landlords drive up prices
Landlords could no longer rely on rent-pricing software to quietly track each other’s moves and push rents higher using confidential data, under a settlement between RealPage Inc. and federal prosecutors to end what critics said was illegal “algorithmic collusion.” The deal announced Monday by the Department of Justice follows a...
John Dorfman: Deckers, Pinterest candidates for January bounce
It’s not only the moon that makes people do strange things. It’s taxes. Every year around this time, investors unload their losing stocks. By doing so they get a tax deduction. Sometimes the mass tax-motivated selling pushes stocks below their intrinsic value. That’s why frequently we see a “January bounce”...
Money Matters: How to rebalance your portfolio in a lofty market
If you’ve chosen a target asset allocation—the mix of stocks, bonds, and cash in your portfolio— you’re probably ahead of many investors. But unless you’re investing in a set-and-forget investment option like a target-date fund, your portfolio’s asset mix will shift as the market fluctuates. In a bull market you...
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette workers return to office after 3-year strikeVideo
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette journalists returned to their North Shore newsroom Monday after a lengthy, bitter strike. Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh President Andrew Goldstein said he expected tension between management, returning strikers and journalists who crossed the picket line. The strikers entered the North Shore Post-Gazette building shortly before 10 a.m. “I’m...
Stores keep prices down in a tough year for turkeys. Other Thanksgiving foods may cost more
CHELSEA, Mich. — Old Brick Farm, where Larry Doll raises chickens, turkeys and ducks, was fortunate this Thanksgiving season. Doll’s small farm west of Detroit had no cases of bird flu, despite an ongoing outbreak that killed more than 2 million U.S. turkeys in the last three months alone. He...
Tea tariffs once sparked a revolution. Now they are creating angst
NEW YORK — A tax on tea once sparked rebellion. This time, it’s just causing headaches. Importers of the prized leaves have watched costs climb, orders stall and margins shrink under the weight of President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Now, even after Trump has given them a reprieve, tea traders say...
Christmas tree retailers find lots to like at a Pennsylvania wholesale auction
MIFFLINBURG, Pa. — Christmas went on the auction block this week in Pennsylvania farm country, and there was no shortage of bidders. About 50,000 Christmas trees and enough wreaths, crafts and other seasonal items to fill an airplane hangar were bought and sold by lots and on consignment at the...
‘Wicked: For Good’ is even more popular than the first, soaring to a $226 million global debut
Universal Pictures’ two-part “Wicked” gamble continues to defy gravity at the box office. Just a year after part one brought droves of audiences to movie theaters around the country, even more people bought opening weekend tickets to see the epic conclusion, “Wicked: For Good.” According to studio estimates on Sunday,...
Station Square bought by Massachusetts-based real estate firm
The core of Station Square — the struggling restaurant, entertainment and office complex on Pittsburgh’s South Shore — is under new ownership. Massachusetts-based WS Development announced Friday it purchased a huge chunk of the center along the Monongahela River from New York-based Brookfield Properties. “Station Square is an iconic place...
Inadequate payment for services nudges small health systems like Independence toward merger, officials say
The merger of smaller regional hospital systems such as Independence Health with a larger health system — this one from West Virginia — is likely being driven, in part, by hospitals hurting from insufficient reimbursement for the cost of treating patients, a Pittsburgh-based health care consultant said. West Virginia University...
Verizon cutting more than 13,000 jobs as it works to ‘reorient’ entire company
NEW YORK — Verizon is laying off more than 13,000 employees in mass job reductions that arrive as the telecommunications giant says it must “reorient” its entire company. The job cuts began on Thursday, per to a staff memo from Verizon CEO Dan Schulman. In the letter, which was seen...
U.S. homes sales rose in October as homebuyers seized on declining mortgage rates
Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes increased last month to the fastest pace since February as lower mortgage rates helped pull more homebuyers into the market. Existing home sales rose 1.2% in October from the previous month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.10 million units, the National Association...
Late-arriving September jobs report likely shows that hiring was sluggish but layoffs few
WASHINGTON — During the 43-day U.S. government shutdown, investors, businesses, policymakers and the Federal Reserve were groping in the dark for clues about the health of the American job market. The federal workers who collect data on hiring and unemployment had been furloughed and couldn’t do their jobs. Now that...
Trump administration to take stake in battery maker Eos Energy
Industrial battery maker Eos Energy Enterprises announced Tuesday the federal government will buy 570,000 cut-rate shares in the company, which is relocating its headquarters to Pittsburgh. The Department of Energy has the right to buy the shares at a penny apiece within the next five years, according to financial disclosures...
Trump urges Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to take Federal Reserve job
WASHINGTON — For the second time in two days, President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he would like to appoint Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to chair the Federal Reserve. Yet Bessent keeps saying he doesn’t want the job, Trump added, in comments to the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum. “We’re thinking about...
Labor Department won’t release full October jobs report, a casualty of the 43-day federal shutdown
WASHINGTON — The Labor Department said Wednesday that it will not be releasing a full jobs report for October because the 43-day federal government shutdown meant it couldn’t calculate the unemployment rate and some other key numbers. Instead, it will release some of the October jobs data — most importantly...
U.S. trade deficit drops 24% in August as Trump’s tariffs reduce imports
WASHINGTON — The U.S. trade deficit fell by nearly 24% in August as President Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs pushed imports lower. In a report delayed for more than seven weeks by the federal government shutdown, the Commerce Department said Wednesday that the gap between what the United States buys...
