%1

The heat is dialing up on Congress to quickly strike an agreement on government funding as lawmakers stare down a critical deadline to avert a shutdown at week’s end, The Hill reported. Lawmakers on both sides have been pressing for a short-term funding bill, often referred to as a continuing resolution (CR), that would keep the government funded at current levels until after the midterm elections and buy time for a larger deal on government spending for fiscal 2023. But Congress has less than a week to pass the stopgap funding measure or risk its first shutdown in years, and lawmakers still have several hurdles to cross before they can clear the finish line. The government will shut down on Oct. 1 without a new spending measure. Most expect that Congress will find a way to pass a short-term measure before midnight Friday, as it is not in either party’s interest to be blamed for a shutdown weeks before the midterm elections. But the timeline and disagreements won’t make it easy. One of the biggest holdups to passage is an ongoing push by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a key centrist, and Democratic leadership to use the must-pass bill as a vehicle for changes to the country’s permitting process for energy projects. Manchin previously struck a deal between top Democrats and President Biden to pass the proposal, which is aimed at speeding up the country’s energy infrastructure projects, in exchange for his support for a sweeping tax, climate and health care plan that narrowly passed Congress in a party-line vote earlier this year.

Criminals potentially stole an estimated $45.6 billion by making fraudulent unemployment insurance claims meant for people laid off during the COVID-19 pandemic, a government watchdog said, the Wall Street Journal reported. The new tally is nearly three times last summer’s estimate of over $16 billion in fraudulent payments. More than half of the potential fraud identified between March 2020 and April 2022 stemmed from individuals filing for benefits in multiple states. Fraudsters also used the Social Security numbers of people who were dead or in prison, as well as suspicious email addresses, the Labor Department’s inspector general’s office said in a report released Thursday. More than 1,000 people have been charged with crimes involving unemployment insurance fraud since March 2020, the report said. The inspector general’s office said it didn’t have access to the most current federal prisoner data for its report and focused on other high-risk areas of fraud. The pandemic unemployment insurance program, started in March 2020, gave those who lost their jobs an extra $600 a week in federal aid at first, which was later reduced to $300 a week. The supplemental benefit expired last year. More than $872 billion in pandemic aid has been paid out since March 2020, according to the inspector general’s office.

Automotive industry suppliers are raising prices to their customers across the board, not just with Ford Motor Co, which warned this week it was taking a $1 billion inflationary cost hit, Reuters reported. Several suppliers said Ford isn't suffering alone, as automakers across the board are being asked to shoulder more of the burden suppliers have faced from spiking energy, labor and raw material costs. Suppliers contacted by Reuters said they have raised prices on parts in the range of 7% to 20%. "During the course of this year, more and more suppliers have gone in to their customers," demanding higher pricing from automakers, said Andreas Weller, chief executive of aluminum parts maker Aludyne. Weller said in Europe alone, natural gas and electricity prices are almost 10 times what they were two years ago thanks to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and even in the United States those prices are five times higher. Throw in the tight labor market and the higher compensation required to attract workers, and "there's no improvement in sight."

Dozens of small drillers helped fuel a resurgence in the busiest U.S. oil patch over the past two years. But they tapped many of their best drilling spots, and will have to ease their rapid pace of drilling as their inventory shrinks, analysts and executives say, the Wall Street Journal reported. Private oil companies in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico emerged from the pandemic-induced oil downturn last year as a growth engine for U.S. shale, now running almost half of the working drilling rigs there, up from a quarter before the pandemic. Their publicly traded rivals are restrained by shareholders pushing for conservative spending and using leftover cash to pay investors and reduce debt. After growing rapidly, most smaller producers now have, on average, around six years of drilling locations that could generate returns at low prices, according to data provided to the Journal by energy analytics firm Enverus Inc. Energy executives say those limitations will likely lead them to slow their drilling. The constraints will likely lead many private producers to level out activity or sell themselves to larger companies that would temper their growth, executives and analysts say. A pullback could crimp overall U.S. oil production. Private producers hold around one-fifth of the Permian’s most valuable acreage, analysts say.

The White House today morning announced it had reached a “tentative” agreement to avert a national rail strike that had threatened the nation’s economy, the Washington Post reported. President Biden said in a statement that the agreement would guarantee “better pay, improved working conditions, and peace of mind around their health care costs” for the workers. The tentative deal — confirmed by a group representing freight rail operators — still faces several steps before it is formally ratified. The unions must still vote on it, but the White House’s blessing of the new terms suggests that the worker groups have been closely involved. Often, the next step of the process can take several weeks, but during that time union members agree not to strike. The deal includes new leave policies, a significant concession by train carriers to workers who had demanded greater flexibility to be able to miss work for medical emergencies without being fired or punished, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe details of the negotiation not yet released.

Maine-based Olympia Sports Acquisitions, LLC filed for chapter 11 protection with plans to liquidate its remaining 35 stores, citing poor sales, online competition and residual problems from the COVID-19 pandemic, SGBOnline.com reported. The Auburn, Maine-based company filed for chapter 11 protection on Sunday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, DE, with $28.7 million in unsecured debt owed to 570 creditors. The case was filed alongside its owner, RSG Acquisitions, LLC and several of its non-operating affiliates. In July, Olympia Sports, which once had more than 200 stores on the East Coast, confirmed that it was shuttering its remaining 35 stores by the end of September, and liquidation sales at all its stores began. Olympia Sports was founded in 1975 by Edward Manganello, who opened his first store at the Maine Mall in South Portland. By 2013, it had 226 locations from Maine to Virginia. In October 2019, Olympia Sports was acquired by CriticalPoint, a Los Angeles-based private investment firm, and 76 stores were closed at the time. Olympia Sports became part of CriticalPoint’s active lifestyle platform, mainly consisting of the JackRabbit running chain, which it acquired in 2017. Last December, Fleet Feet acquired the JackRabbit running stores, with the Olympia Sports chain remaining under the ownership of CriticalPoint.

The Biden administration urged railroads and unions to reach a deal to avoid a railroad work stoppage, saying on Monday it would pose "an unacceptable outcome" to the U.S. economy that could cost $2 billion a day, Reuters reported. Railroads, including Union Pacific, Berkshire Hathaway's BNSF, CSX, and Norfolk Southern, have until a minute after midnight on Friday to reach tentative deals with hold out unions representing about 60,000 workers. Failing to do so opens the door to union strikes, employer lockouts and congressional intervention. U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh is postponing travel to Ireland to remain in talks, the department said Monday. "The parties continue to negotiate, and last night Secretary Walsh again engaged to push the parties to reach a resolution that averts any shutdown of our rail system," a Labor Department spokesperson said. "All parties need to stay at the table, bargain in good faith to resolve outstanding issues, and come to an agreement." U.S. railroads account for almost 30% of cargo transport by weight and maintain nearly 97% of the tracks Amtrak uses for commuter rail. Widespread railroad disruptions could choke supplies of food and fuel, spawn transportation chaos and stoke inflation.

About 15,000 nurses in Minnesota walked off the job Monday to protest understaffing and overwork — marking the largest strike of private-sector nurses in U.S. history, the Washington Post reported. Slated to last three days, the strike spotlights nationwide nursing shortages exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic that often result in patients not receiving adequate care. Tensions remain high between nurses and health-care administrators across the country, and there are signs that work stoppages could spread to other states. Minnesota nurses charge that some units go without a lead nurse on duty and that nurses fresh out of school are delegated assignments typically held by more experienced nurses, across some 16 hospitals where strikes are expected. The nurses are demanding a role in staffing plans, changes to shift scheduling practices and higher wages.

Illness caused by COVID-19 shrank the U.S. labor force by around 500,000 people, a hit that is likely to continue if the virus continues to sicken workers at current rates, according to a new study released today, the Wall Street Journal reported. Millions of people left the labor force — the number of people working or looking for work — during the pandemic for various reasons, including retirement, lack of child care and fear of COVID-19. The total size of the labor force reached 164.7 million people in August, exceeding the February 2020 pre-pandemic level for the first time. The labor force would have 500,000 more members if not for the people sickened by COVID-19, according to the study’s authors, economists Gopi Shah Goda of Stanford University and Evan J. Soltas, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “If we stay where we are with COVID infection rates going forward, we expect that 500,000-person loss to persist until either exposure goes down or severity goes down,” said Mr. Soltas. That assumes that some of those previously sickened eventually return to work. The authors “provide the most credible evidence to date about labor-market impacts for a large set of workers,” said Aaron Sojourner, an economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, who wasn’t involved in the study. The study, which hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed, was based on a representative population of more than 300,000 workers followed over 14 months in the Census Bureau’s monthly household survey. The analysis covered the period from January 2010 to June 2022. The authors used health-related, weeklong absences as a proxy for probable COVID illnesses. From March 2020 to June 2022, approximately 10 workers per thousand missed a week of work due to health reasons, on average, up from six per thousand on average over the decade before the pandemic.