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Congressional negotiators are slated to announce a deal for $10 billion in additional funding for the U.S. Covid response, but were unable to agree on global aid and dropped it from the agreement, the Washington Post reported. The package would enable U.S. officials to purchase more therapeutics, tests, vaccines and other supplies, after the White House repeatedly warned that it needed new funding for those things. But it includes no money for the global response, which Biden officials have said is critical to protect Americans from the emergence of new, potentially dangerous variants in other parts of the world that would likely make their way to the United States. Senate negotiators, including Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Richard Burr (R-N.C.), were seeking a compromise with Democrats, after lawmakers could not agree on a $15 billion package that would have included about $10 billion in domestic funding and $5 billion for the international response. The deal set to be announced Monday is expected to repurpose funding from previous stimulus packages, lawmakers said last week.

High levels of workers quitting their jobs -- dubbed the “Great Resignation” -- may not be that rare after all, according to the latest Economic Letter from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Bloomberg News reported. “Evidence from both recent worker surveys and historical data on quits shows that the ‘Great Resignation’ is not as unusual as one might think,” wrote Bart Hobijn, a visiting fellow with the regional Fed’s research department and a professor of economics at Arizona State University. The so-called quits rate, which measures voluntary job leavers as a share of total employment, remained near a record at 2.9% in February. Roughly 4.4 million Americans quit their jobs in the month, according to Labor Department data back to 2000. That high reading has been cited by Fed officials as a sign of a very tight U.S. labor market -- alongside an unemployment rate that fell to 3.6% in March -- which is pushing wages up. The central bank also touts those metrics to argue the job market is strong enough to handle interest rate hikes to confront the hottest inflation in 40 years. But Hobijn argues that prior to 2000, high waves of quits had actually been quite common during rapid economic recoveries in the postwar period, based on the Manufacturing Labor Turnover Survey, which was discontinued in 1981.

The House might vote this week on a small-business pandemic aid package that would provide $42 billion for additional restaurant relief and $13 billion for other “hard hit” industries, Roll Call reported. The Rules Committee is scheduled to meet on the revised bill Tuesday afternoon, which indicates floor action soon after. Democratic leaders are whipping the bill to see if there are enough votes to pass it, according to a source familiar with the planning who wasn't authorized to speak publicly. The restaurant and hard-hit business grant funding would be offset by “all funds rescinded, seized, reclaimed, or otherwise returned” from various programs in prior pandemic relief laws. It was not immediately clear if that would score as a full or partial offset for the $55 billion in total funding. Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) said on Friday that he has been working with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for months to provide additional aid to restaurants and other small businesses that were not able to access previous pandemic relief programs. Speaking a few hours before the bill was released, Phillips said that he was hopeful for a vote and that there would be bipartisan support given the measure is offset with recaptured fraudulent awards.

The U.S. labor market strengthened last month as the pandemic’s grip receded and more workers jumped back into the labor force, the Wall Street Journal reported. Employers added 431,000 jobs in March, as restaurants, manufacturers and retailers snatched up workers, and hiring in January and February was stronger than previously reported, the Labor Department said Friday. The report marked the 11th straight month of job gains above 400,000, the longest such stretch of growth in records dating back to 1939. The unemployment rate fell to 3.6% in March from 3.8% a month earlier, quickly approaching the February 2020 prepandemic rate of 3.5%, a 50-year low. Low joblessness is helping boost wages, though not enough to keep up with high inflation for many. COVID-19 cases of the omicron variant have declined sharply since late January, helping boost employer demand for labor, as more consumers are booking plane tickets, staying in hotels and dining out. The easing pandemic is also encouraging more people to seek jobs. One key example: The pandemic was less likely to deter work searches in March than just a month earlier. Nearly 900,000 people were prevented from looking for a job due to the pandemic in March, down from 1.2 million in February, the Labor Department said.

U.S. companies are relaxing many of the vaccine and other COVID-related requirements that had become a staple of corporate life in the pandemic, the Wall Street Journal reported. As office occupancy nears pandemic-era highs in many U.S. cities, a number of employers have communicated new, looser safety protocols to workers. Some companies made masks optional in the office for all workers, while others dropped testing requirements for the unvaccinated or simplified the daily return-to-office questionnaires. The new protocols in many cases follow updated guidance from health authorities, who have moved away from blanket preventive measures in favor of a more targeted approach focused on limiting infection and severe illness in high-risk areas. Infections have edged up again in the U.S., and the omicron BA.2 variant accounts for more new COVID-19 cases.

U.S. Senate negotiators on Thursday were nearing a deal on a $10 billion COVID-19 bill to help the federal government acquire more vaccines and medical supplies as it prepares for future variants of the virus that has upended American life, Reuters reported. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that senators were "close to a final agreement" on a bill aiming to shore up stockpiles to be used both domestically and internationally. If a deal is finalized in the coming days, the Senate might be able to pass the bill and send it to the House of Representatives before the start of a spring recess at the end of next week. The amount is a tiny fraction of the $4.6 trillion Congress has approved since early 2020 to fight the virus, much of which was devoted to offsetting its heavy economic hit. Early this month, Congress failed to pass a $15.6 billion relief bill amid Republican opposition to new federal spending. Many Democrats, meanwhile, rebelled against taking back some money earmarked to help state and local governments in order to pay for the new round of coronavirus relief.

Major automakers are expected to report on Friday that first-quarter U.S. car and light truck sales fell sharply compared to a year ago, with more uncertainty ahead because of parts shortages, high fuel prices and rising interest rates, Reuters reported. J.D. Power and LMC Automotive forecast that January-March U.S. car and light truck sales will decline 18% from a year ago, and predict the annualized sales pace for March will slump to 12.7 million vehicles, down from 17.8 million a year ago. Cox Automotive said earlier this week first-quarter U.S. auto sales would be the weakest in a decade. Tesla Inc. could buck the downward trend. The world's most valuable automaker is expected to report its first quarter deliveries as soon as Friday, and Wall Street had been expecting an improvement from the fourth quarter figure of 308,650 vehicles. However, Tesla has had to shut down production at its Shanghai factory this week to comply with COVID-19 lockdowns. Two years after the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns derailed the U.S. economy, automakers are still trying to find their balance. The spike in gasoline prices, propelled by the war in Ukraine and the worst inflation in 40 years, have rattled consumer confidence. Rising rates coupled with high pump prices have often been harbingers of recessions for the auto industry in the past. Consumer intentions to buy a new or used vehicle in the next six months have slumped in March for the second month in a row, and for used vehicles are at the lowest levels in 15 months, according to a survey released by the Conference Board this week.

Job openings last month remained near record levels, and the number of workers voluntarily leaving their positions increased, the Labor Department said yesterday, the New York Times reported. The data, released as part of the agency’s monthly report on job openings, layoffs and quitting, serve as indicators of how much demand there is for workers in the U.S. economy and the extent to which employers are still struggling with labor shortages months after the economy began recovering from the pandemic’s worst damage. There were about 11.3 million job openings in February, essentially the same as the month before and down a little from a record in December, though the number of hires overall edged up by 263,000 last month, to about 6.7 million. After falling during the peak of COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, the rates at which so-called prime-age workers — those aged 25 to 54 — are working or seeking work has rallied back to pre pandemic levels. Yet with the economy growing faster than in decades, demand for labor has outpaced the availability of workers — at least at the wages and benefits employers are offering. There are still roughly three million or so people who have not returned to the work force, according to the government data.

As companies struggle to hire and retain workers during a nationwide labor shortage and waves of post-pandemic turnover, some are offering to help pay off one of the biggest debts many young people owe: their student loans, the Boston Globe reported. Even before the pandemic, interest in student loan repayment programs was rising among employers, said Craig Copeland of the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Now in a historically tight labor market, more companies are looking at student loan relief as an offering to woo workers just like health insurance, transit passes, and gym memberships.

In a world contending with no end of economic troubles, a fresh source of concern now looms: the prospect of a confrontation between union dockworkers and their employers at some of the most critical ports on earth, the New York Times reported. The potential conflict centers on negotiations over a new contract for more than 22,000 union workers employed at 29 ports along the West Coast of the United States. Nearly three-fourths work at the twin ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, the primary gateway for goods shipped to the United States from Asia, and a locus of problems afflicting the global supply chain. The contract for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union expires at the end of June. For those whose livelihoods are tied to ports — truckers, logistics companies, retailers — July 1 marks the beginning of a period of grave uncertainty. A labor impasse could worsen the floating traffic jams that have kept dozens of ships waiting in the Pacific before they can pull up to the docks. That could aggravate shortages and send already high prices for consumer goods soaring. Some port workers accuse the longshoremen of adding to the chaos at the ports in the lead up to their contract negotiations, boosting their leverage with the terminal operators while stymying the flow of cargo for everyone else. Among those who work on the docks, such depictions fuel grievous resentment. With ports consumed by traffic and Americans bemoaning inflation, the longshoremen grasp that their leverage may be uniquely potent. An impasse or a strike could deal another shock to the global economy, just as the world is grappling with the impacts of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and as China imposes new Covid restrictions on industry.