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Lawmakers have unleashed more than $5 trillion in relief aid over the past year to help businesses and individuals through the pandemic downturn. But the scale of that effort is placing serious strain on a patchwork oversight network created to ferret out waste and fraud, the New York Times reported. The Biden administration has taken steps to improve accountability and oversight safeguards spurned by the Trump administration, including more detailed and frequent reporting requirements for those receiving funds. But policing the money has been complicated by long-running turf battles; the lack of a centralized, fully functional system to track how funds are being spent; and the speed with which the government has tried to disburse aid. The scope of oversight is vast, with the Biden administration policing the tail end of the relief money disbursed by the Trump administration last year in addition to the $1.9 trillion rescue package that Democrats approved in March. Much of that money is beginning to flow out the door, including $21.6 billion in rental assistance funds, $350 billion to state and local governments, $29 billion for restaurants and a $16 billion grant fund for live-event businesses like theaters and music clubs. The funds are supposed to be tracked by a hodgepodge of overseers, including congressional panels, inspectors general and the White House budget office. But the system has been plagued by disagreements and, until recently, disarray.

A growing number of Republican-led states are rejecting enhanced federal COVID-19 pandemic unemployment payments, saying the extra $300-a-week supplement is providing an incentive for some people to avoid work at a time when employers are struggling to find labor, the Wall Street Journal reported. Iowa and Tennessee yesterday joined the list of at least nine states that are moving toward the elimination of the extra benefits ahead of the program’s scheduled expiration in September. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has also called for an end to the bonus. “Federal pandemic-related unemployment benefit programs initially provided displaced Iowans with crucial assistance when the pandemic began,” Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds said in a statement that called for the pandemic-related benefit to end June 12. “But now that our businesses and schools have reopened, these payments are discouraging people from returning to work.” President Biden on Monday defended the enhanced benefits and said that his administration would make clear that people can’t turn down suitable jobs and keep collecting benefits, except in specific circumstances. His Democratic administration has said that other factors are keeping workers on the sidelines, such as fear of getting sick during the pandemic and a lack of full-time child care.

Job openings reached a record level of 8.1 million at the end of March, reflecting a widening gap between open positions and workers willing and able to take those roles, the Wall Street Journal reported. Available jobs rose by a seasonally adjusted 600,000 in March to exceed the prior record of 7.6 million set in November 2018, the Labor Department said Tuesday. Data from job search site Indeed.com separately showed job posting continued to rise in April, ending the month 24% higher than February 2020’s pre-pandemic level. The Labor Department said the highest rate of open jobs was in the South, while the strongest growth in openings was in the Northeast. Government and private data showed increasing openings in construction, manufacturing and hospitality. The growth in available jobs came as hiring cooled to a seasonally adjusted 266,000 in April from a gain of 770,000 the prior month, the Labor Department said last week.

If the coronavirus pandemic produced its own brand of anxiety for American workers trying to stay healthy while balancing job and family demands, the coming return to "normal" will pose a new set of challenges, Reuters reported. Like whether to first try to claw back all the free hours of labor donated to companies during the crisis, or shift to a "future-proof" occupation to insure against the next one, or figure out how to compete with the robots being deployed more widely because of the pandemic. Some industries are recovering faster than others, with the worst-hit sectors continuing to lag. Even though U.S. gross domestic product is near its pre-pandemic peak, jobs are rebounding more slowly, suggesting a potentially prolonged period of adaptation ahead for both workers and companies. Payroll processor ADP set a baseline of sorts in a recent survey of more than 32,000 workers globally that showed just how unsettled the landscape is as the pandemic, at least in the major developed economies, reaches its endgame. Over the past year, for example, workers often said they benefited from the flexibility of working from home and wanted it to continue. Companies and their employees have both reported improved productivity. But it turns out some of that "flexibility" was consumed by a substantial increase in unpaid overtime, according to the ADP survey, which was conducted last fall. That means the higher productivity may be something of a mirage, not the outcome of better work-life balance but value donated to firms by workers worried about staying employed. Workers globally reported unpaid hours rose about 25%, from 7.2 to 9.3 per week. In the United States, it more than doubled from 4.1 to 9.

The search for high returns takes many pension funds far and wide, but the Pennsylvania teachers’ fund went farther than most, according to a New York Times analysis. It invested in trailer park chains, pistachio farms, pay phone systems for prison inmates — and, in a particularly bizarre twist, loans to Kurds trying to carve out their own homeland in northern Iraq. Now the F.B.I. is on the case, investigating investment practices at the Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System, and new questions are emerging about how the fund’s staff and consultants calculated returns. The decisions that brought the fund to this point — the investigation is still in its early stages — are by now commonplace in the world of public pensions. Lawmakers years ago overpromised what the Pennsylvania fund would provide its members, even as the performance of its plain-vanilla stock and bond investments fell far short of what was necessary to deliver on those commitments. That pushed the $62 billion fund into the highly risky world of alternative investments, which can sometimes pay big bucks but also cost exorbitant fees and tie up money in ventures that retail investors wouldn’t touch. Despite putting an eye-popping 51 percent of assets into alternatives, the fund couldn’t deliver the high returns it sought. To make matters worse, someone did the math incorrectly, calculating the fund’s returns in a way that invited suspicion. The upshot: Teachers and taxpayers will probably have to pay more to keep the pension plan afloat. When people have challenged the Pennsylvania fund’s strategy, officials said it was paying off — until March, when the fund suddenly disclosed that it had overstated last year’s investment returns. It also said officials had misstated its investment returns at a board of trustees meeting in December.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) has ordered all federal, pandemic-related unemployment programs in the state to end on June 30, citing workforce shortages, The Hill reported. In a memo to South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce Director Daniel Ellzey, McMaster said that businesses “face an unprecedented labor shortage” attributed caused by pandemic-related benefits given on top of state unemployment benefits. McMaster said what was intended to be short-term assistance turned into “dangerous federal entitlement, incentivizing and paying workers to stay at home rather than encouraging them to return to the workplace.” South Carolina is the second state that will end expanded unemployment benefits next month. Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) announced Tuesday that the state will stop participating in expanded benefits. The state will instead use funds from President Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill to give $1,200 to people who had an active unemployment claim as of May 4, accepted a job offer and completed at least four weeks of paid work.

The private-sector labor market had a strong showing in April, adding 742,000 jobs, according to payroll company ADP, The Hill reported. March's strong showing was also revised up to 565,000 new jobs from the 517,000 originally reported. Economists had expected 800,000 new jobs in April, somewhat higher than ADP reported. Still, the latest uptick in jobs is significant and a sign of an economic recovery quickly gaining steam, with nearly a third of the hires coming from the leisure and hospitality sector, which was decimated in the COVID-19 pandemic. Over 85 percent of the new jobs were in the service sector. "The labor market continues an upward trend of acceleration and growth, posting the strongest reading since September 2020,” said ADP chief economist Nela Richardson.

The Labor Department is rescinding a rule that made it harder for gig and contract workers to argue they were entitled to minimum wage and overtime protections, part of a push to undo Trump-era decisions that favored businesses and employers, the Washington Post reported. The withdrawal of the “Independent Contractor” rule, which limited the ability of workers to argue that they were misclassified as contractors when they should have been employees, will be published in the Federal Register yesterday and become effective today. Companies have increased the use of contractors in recent decades in part to lower labor costs. Employees are entitled to a range of benefits not afforded to contractors, including a minimum wage and overtime pay. Labor advocates say that many of these workers are misclassified, and should be counted as employees. The Labor Department has the power to investigate these cases and rectify violations when they are found. “By withdrawing the Independent Contractor Rule, we will help preserve essential worker rights and stop the erosion of worker protections that would have occurred had the rule gone into effect,” Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said in a statement. “Legitimate business owners play an important role in our economy but, too often, workers lose important wage and related protections when employers misclassify them as independent contractors. We remain committed to ensuring that employees are recognized clearly and correctly when they are, in fact, employees so that they receive the protections the Fair Labor Standards Act provides.” The rule change is likely to add to speculation about how the Biden administration plans to deal with the question of gig work — one of the most closely watched questions about labor policy in the new administration. Companies such as Uber and Lyft typically classify the workforce their apps rely on as contractors, while aggressively pushing back against state officials, courts and Democratic lawmakers who say that their workers are misclassified.

Restaurants, bars, caterers and other food businesses devastated by the pandemic began applying Monday for help from a new $28.6 billion federal aid program, but the money isn’t expected to last long, the New York Times reported. Despite a few glitches after thousands descended on the application website for the Restaurant Revitalization Fund when it went live at noon, the process was fairly straightforward, applicants said. That was a welcome change from the technical problems that have plagued other aid programs run by the Small Business Administration, which is managing the restaurant fund. “It was impressively smooth,” said Sarah Horak, who co-owns three bars and restaurants in Grand Forks, N.D. She was able to submit her first application just 10 minutes after she logged on to the website. Congress created the restaurant fund as part of the $1.9 trillion relief bill passed in March. For the first 21 days, the Small Business Administration will approve claims exclusively from businesses that are majority-owned by people who fall into one of the priority groups designated by legislators: women, veterans and individuals who qualify as both socially and economically disadvantaged. That latter group includes those who meet certain income and asset limits and are Black, Hispanic, Native American, Asian-Pacific American or South Asian American, the agency said. Applicants from those groups will be asked to certify their own eligibility for the exclusivity period. That three-week priority period alone is likely to exhaust the fund. The money allocated by Congress “is probably not going to be enough funds, in all likelihood, for the demand that’s out there,” Patrick Kelley, who runs the S.B.A.’s Capital Access office, acknowledged on a webinar last week. He said he hoped Congress would provide more money as needed. The fund offers grants of up to $10 million. The amount each business can receive equals the difference between its 2019 and 2020 gross receipts, minus certain other federal assistance such as loans from the Paycheck Protection Program.

Toyota Motor Corp. is stockpiling up to four months of some parts. Volkswagen AG is building six factories so it can get its own batteries. And, in shades of Henry Ford, Tesla Inc. is trying to lock up access to raw materials, the Wall Street Journal reported. The hyperefficient auto supply chain symbolized by the words “just in time” is undergoing its biggest transformation in more than half a century, accelerated by the troubles car makers have suffered during the pandemic. After sudden swings in demand, freak weather and a series of accidents, they are reassessing their basic assumption that they could always get the parts they needed when they needed them. “The just-in-time model is designed for supply-chain efficiencies and economies of scale,” said Ashwani Gupta, Nissan Motor Co.’s chief operating officer. “The repercussions of an unprecedented crisis like Covid highlight the fragility of our supply-chain model.” Consider Ford Motor Co. and its F-150 pickup, the bestselling vehicle in the U.S. The latest version is crammed with technology including a hybrid gas-electric drive and automatic Tesla-style software updates. With vaccinations beginning to beat back COVID-19, customers bought around 200,000 F-150s in the first quarter of this year, its best retail start in 13 years. Yet now supply is short. Truck factories were shut down or had limited production for all of April and the slowdown will likely continue through at least mid-May. The hit to pretax profit is as much as $2.5 billion.