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Commercial chapter 11 filings totaled 747 in September, a 78 percent increase over September 2019’s total of 420 filings, according to data provided by Epiq. However, overall September 2020 business filings were 2,677, a decrease of 16 percent compared to the 3,190 business filings in September 2019. Total U.S. filings registered 39,701 in September 2020, down 35 percent from last September’s total of 61,156. The 37,024 consumer filings in September represented a 41 percent decrease from the September 2019 consumer total of 63,132.

The coronavirus pandemic accelerated a major shift in the retail industry, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Traffic to stores evaporated. Online credit-card transactions soared. E-commerce sales in the second quarter rose by 44.5 percent compared with the same period in 2019, and they now make up 16 percent of all U.S. retail sales, according to the Commerce Department. Consumer spending has picked up since many cities and states began lifting lockdown restrictions and allowing stores to reopen in May, but only some sectors have regained lost ground. Sales, profits and hiring at many grocers and home-improvement retailers are up. Many apparel sellers have slashed staff and closed stores for good. Weekly foot traffic from July until the second week of September is down by an average of 14 percent compared with the same period a year ago, according to mobile-device location data from foot-traffic analytics firm Placer.ai. The pandemic pushed many of the last online-shopping holdouts over the e-commerce hump. Online transactions with credit and debit cards have increased an average of 88 percent each month since the beginning of April, according to weekly transactions collected by financial-data firm Facteus. Home Depot Inc. said online sales doubled in the second quarter, while Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc. said that the retailer’s online sales nearly tripled in the same period.

A judge ordered the bankrupt operator of New York Sports Clubs and Lucille Roberts gyms to stop charging New York customers who submitted cancellation requests or whose primary gyms remain closed, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The ruling by Judge Debra A. James of the Supreme Court of New York came after New York’s attorney general filed a lawsuit last week accusing Town Sports International Holdings Inc. of charging monthly fees to customers despite coronavirus-related closures. “This order stops New York Sports Clubs and Lucille Roberts dead in their tracks and halts these health clubs from continuing to unlawfully charge many of their members,” Attorney General Letitia James said. James began investigating the gym operator’s billing practices in March when Town Sports didn’t freeze memberships after the state mandated fitness centers to shut down. Town Sports then resumed the charges on Sept. 1. As of last week, the attorney general’s office had received nearly 1,850 complaints about the company. A restraining order issued Friday has blocked the company from charging or attempting to charge any dues, fines or penalties to customers in New York who have submitted cancellation requests since March 16 and to those whose main gyms remain closed.

Southwest Airlines said yesterday that it is asking unions to agree to pay cuts in order to prevent furloughs and layoffs through 2021 as the industry struggles to stem losses from the coronavirus pandemic in the absence of more federal aid, Reuters reported. Unions represent about 83% of roughly 61,000 Southwest employees. Non-union staff salaries will be cut by 10 percent until Jan. 1, 2022, when they will return to the current level. “Our objectives are to make this quick and simple and avoid furloughs,” Chief Executive Gary Kelly said in an interview. The union representing Southwest pilots said that it had tentatively agreed to meet and discuss cost savings if a second COVID-19 relief package does not pass in Washington. The flight attendants and mechanics unions did not immediately comment. Rivals American Airlines and United Airlines began furloughing 32,000 employees last week when a ban on job cuts expired without another $25 billion in federal payroll support that airlines have been seeking. Read more. 

In related news, the Federal Aviation Administration aid yesterday it would extend temporary waivers of minimum flight requirements at some major U.S. airports through late March 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic, Reuters reported. Airlines can lose their slots at congested airports if they do not use them at least 80 percent of the time. The FAA said it would extend the waivers at New York’s John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport that were set to expire in October. At four other U.S. airports where the FAA has a formal schedule-review process - Chicago O’Hare, Newark, New Jersey, Los Angeles and San Francisco - the agency proposes to extend credits to airlines for flights that were canceled due to the coronavirus as though those flights were operated through Dec. 31. Major airline groups cited “historically low levels of bookings, with overall bookings down 82 percent year-on-year for 2020 compared to the outlook for 2019; consumer demand that continues to fall ... and the need for schedule flexibility to support sustainable loads.” Read more.

Hartford Financial Services Group, The Travelers Cos. Inc. and other insurers won’t have to face a consolidation of hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of business-interruption claims tied to the COVID-19 outbreak, a group of judges concluded, Bloomberg News reported. Having one judge oversee more than 1,000 cases -- grouped by individual insurers -- would be too cumbersome, and it’s more efficient to have courts around the U.S. decide whether the coronavirus fallout triggered coverage by major insurers such as Hartford, Travelers and Lloyds of London, the legal panel ruled Friday. The group did agree to have a federal judge in Chicago oversee cases against Society Insurance, a smaller carrier. It was the last gasp of plaintiffs’ lawyers attempting to pull together business-interruption cases against major insurers. They’re seeking to recover losses from the economic blows wrought by the virus, which prompted a wave of bankruptcy filings. They argued that having one judge oversee the litigation would cut duplication and hold down legal costs. “Rather than have one judge attempt to organize and resolve the core policy interpretation issues,” having judges already hearing the cases decide whether coverage exists “will result in quicker and more efficient resolution of this litigation,” U.S. District Judge Karen Caldwell, the panel’s chair, said in a nine-page order. Insurers warn that the tidal wave of business-interruption suits could swamp them. Analysts warned this year that the industry could face at least $100 billion in losses from the pandemic, which could wind up being the most in insurance history.

More workers identified themselves as permanently laid off and unemployed for the long term in September, a sign that the labor market’s recovery from the coronavirus pandemic is likely to be slow and protracted, the Wall Street Journal reported. While millions of workers have returned to jobs that were suspended this spring due to the virus, those that weren’t called back face the rising prospect of prolonged joblessness and income loss. Those same challenges were a feature of the slow economic recovery from the 2007-09 recession. In April, the most severe month for job loss in the current downturn, 88 percent of those who recently lost jobs reported their layoff as temporary, meaning they expected to return to the same role within six months, according to the Labor Department. In September, the share of such optimists fell to 51 percent, Friday’s jobs report showed. Meanwhile, those reporting themselves as permanent job losers rose to 3.8 million in September, from 2 million in April. That figure could rise further in October as airlines and Walt Disney Co. informed thousands of workers this week that temporary furloughs will become permanent layoffs. Many of those who lost jobs are struggling to find other work. Last month, 58 percent of unemployed workers had been out of a job for at least three months, including 19 percent off the job for at least six, and who are considered long-term unemployed.

Six months after launching the biggest small business aid initiative in history, Congress is working to extend the Paycheck Protection Program — but with new measures to ensure that the most vulnerable of businesses have a better shot at funding, the <em>Wall Street Journal</em> reported. The PPP initiative delivered more than 5 million loans totaling $525 billion, but was dogged by complaints from many borrowers and small-business groups that it favored sophisticated companies with strong ties to lenders, which issued the loans, over those with weaker financial roots, including many in minority neighborhoods. That disparity played out in how fast companies were able to get loans in the first critical weeks following the program’s April 3 launch, according to a <em>Wall Street Journal</em> review of lending data in the nation’s capital.

States accidentally overpaid thousands of workers over the spring and summer during a rush to get relief to unemployed and idled Americans. Now they want the money back, the Wall Street Journal reported. Even though the funds have long since been spent and many of those workers continue to struggle with the coronavirus pandemic’s economic fallout, people across multiple states are being asked to repay thousands of dollars or are having their current benefits cut to make up the difference. Individuals themselves often have no idea they are being overpaid, in part because formulas for unemployment checks can be hard to decipher. Many also waited weeks to start receiving benefits, and say they believed that large checks were simply the back payments they were owed because of delays. For many people, the repayment obligations hinge on a fine-print detail in the March CARES Act, which authorized the new programs. States can waive recovery of overpayments for most unemployment insurance when there is no fraud involved, but the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program follows a different set of rules. It is administered as a form of disaster relief, and the statute that guides it blocks states from forgiving the debts. Adding to the complexity, the PUA program gave new categories of workers—including gig workers and the self-employed—access to unemployment checks. But state unemployment systems were designed to calculate benefits based on traditional jobs, employer records, W-2 tax documents and verifying income with pay stubs. Re-engineering the systems to account for far more complicated self-employment income was bound to create problems, experts say.