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A telephone call on coronavirus economic relief between U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and an adviser to President Donald Trump ended yesterday with no breakthrough, and Pelosi said that talks would not resume until the Trump administration agreed to $2.2 trillion in aid, Reuters reported. Pelosi and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows spoke by phone for about 25 minutes, the first chance in weeks to resume stalled COVID-19 aid negotiations. But the two sides soon appeared to be as far apart as ever. Meadows and Pelosi are two of the four negotiators who were involved in talks on legislation to help Americans and businesses suffering from a coronavirus pandemic that has now killed nearly 180,000 people. The others are Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. The talks broke down on Aug. 7, with the sides far apart on major issues including the size of unemployment benefits for tens of millions of people made jobless by the pandemic, aid for state and local governments and funding for schools and food support programs. The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives in May passed a $3.4 trillion coronavirus relief bill, but Pelosi offered to reduce that sum by $1 trillion. The White House, which had proposed $1 trillion in aid, rejected the offer. Democrats have since demanded that the White House agree to “meet in the middle.”

United Airlines is preparing for the biggest pilot furloughs of its history after announcing on Thursday the need to cut 2,850 pilot jobs this year, or about 21 percent of the total, without further U.S. government aid, Reuters reported. Airlines, reeling from the devastating impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic on air travel, have asked the U.S. government for another $25 billion to cover employee payroll through March. The first tranche, which banned any job cuts until Oct. 1, expires at the end of September, but talks in Washington have stalled as Congress has struggled to reach agreement on a broader coronavirus assistance package. United’s planned cuts, released in a memo to employees and shared with the media, would run between Oct. 1 and Nov. 30. They are significantly higher than the 1,900 announced earlier this week by Delta Air Lines and 1,600 by American Airlines. Facing a shrinking industry in the years ahead, airlines have generally tried to mitigate the number of forced job cuts by offering early retirement or voluntary departure deals, but some carriers’ packages have been more attractive than others. “While other airlines have chosen to reduce manpower through voluntary means, it is tragic that United has limited those options for our pilots and instead has chosen to furlough more pilots than ever before in our history,” the union representing United’s 13,000 pilots said in a statement. United said the numbers were based on current travel demand for the remainder of the year and its anticipated flying schedule, which it said “continues to be fluid with the resurgence of COVID-19 in regions across the U.S.”

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said yesterday that he is not optimistic about reaching a new coronavirus relief deal before the end of September, predicting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will use the government funding cliff at the end of next month as leverage to strike a deal on pandemic aid, Politico reported. Meadows said his staff had reached out to Pelosi's office on Tuesday but added that he does not anticipate a response. The White House chief of staff said that lawmakers from both parties have privately expressed to him a desire to make progress on coronavirus relief. The hold up, Meadows said he suspects, is that Pelosi is holding back her party's rank and file in order to secure more Democratic priorities in any legislation. "It's really been Speaker Pelosi really driving this train as a conductor more so than really anybody," Meadows said. "And I think privately she says she wants a deal and publicly she says she wants a deal, but when it comes to dealing with Republicans and the administration, we haven't seen a lot of action." Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill told Politico that a member of Meadows' staff texted the speaker's staff to confirm they had the correct number for the chief of staff, but did not mention resuming talks. Meadows also said he would call Pelosi during an interview on ABC News on Sunday, but Hammill said he never did.

President Donald Trump is weighing executive action to avoid massive layoffs at U.S. airlines if Congress fails to agree a fresh coronavirus stimulus package, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said yesterday, Reuters reported. His remarks came a day after American Airlines said its workforce will shrink by 40,000, including 19,000 involuntary cuts, in October without an extension of government aid as the pandemic continues to devastate travel demand. U.S. airlines received $25 billion in payroll aid under the CARES Act to protect jobs through October and the industry has lobbied for another $25 billion to keep workers employed through March, when they hope travel demand will be stronger. Meadows said he had spoken with officials from American, as well as from United Airlines and Delta Air Lines. “We will continue to work with the administration and our bipartisan supporters in Congress and hope to come to a resolution in a timely fashion,” American said in a statement. United has warned that 36,000 jobs are at risk. Delta said Monday that it would furlough 1,941 pilots but has not detailed cuts across other employee groups.

Bed Bath & Beyond said yesterday that it’s cutting 2,800 jobs at its corporate headquarters and stores — about 5 percent of its overall workforce — as the troubled home goods retailer looks to pivot more of its business online, the Associated Press reported. The company said that the job cuts will save it about $150 million a year, before taxes. The figure represents a portion of the anticipated savings from a corporate restructuring plan announced earlier this year. The Union, N.J.-based company said the action is designed to reduce layers at the corporate level, reposition field operations to better serve customers who are shopping more online, as well as realign technology, its supply network and merchandising teams. The moves build on Bed Bath & Beyond’s recent introduction of services like allowing online shoppers to pickup items in the store or at curbside.

America’s economic recovery is in an uneasy pause, with key indicators of hiring, shopping and investment stalling or in retreat in the wake of a resurgence in coronavirus cases across broad sections of the country, and with Congress and President Trump showing no signs of progress on another stimulus deal, the New York Times reported. Real-time measures of consumer spending, business sentiment, small-business reopening plans and even available jobs began flatlining last month, suggesting that the wave of virus infections that swept across parts of the U.S. in June and July came with economic consequences. Small-business data from the time management firm Homebase shows no improvement since the middle of the summer in employment or hours worked in crucial parts of the economy. Job postings from the online recruiting site Indeed slipped backward this week for the first time since May. Now, key policy supports that included a $600-per-week unemployment insurance expansion have begun to lapse. Congress appears unlikely to pick up negotiations on a new relief package until September, and analysts are increasingly accounting for the possibility that lawmakers will fail to strike a deal before the November election. By that point, with the changing weather pushing many people back inside, public health officials fear a new wave of coronavirus infections. Those twin risks — the path of the coronavirus and waning policy support — loom over the country’s fledgling recovery when the economy has yet to recover about 60 percent of the jobs lost since the start of the pandemic. More than half of those who are still out of work say they never expect to go back to their old jobs, according to polling from the online research firm SurveyMonkey.

Long-term unemployment helped define the Great Recession. Countless networks, relationships and skills that bound employee to employer were ripped apart in the global financial crisis. It took about eight years for the unemployment rate to recover from that dislocation. Now economists fear it’s happening all over again, according to a Washington Post analysis. The devastating surge in unemployment in March and April was supposed to be temporary, as businesses shuttered to avert the greatest public health crisis in more than a century. Most workers reported they expected to be called back soon. But nearly half a year later, many of the jobs that were stuck in purgatory are being lost forever. About 33 percent of the employees put on furlough in March were laid off for good by July, according to Gusto, a payroll and benefits firm whose clients include small businesses in all 50 states and D.C. Only 37 percent have been called back to their previous employer. There were 3.7 million U.S. unemployed who had permanently lost their previous job as of July, according to the Labor Department. That figure doubled from February to June, held steady in July, and is expected to hit between 6.2 million and 8.7 million by late this year, according to a new analysis from economists Gabriel Chodorow-Reich of Harvard University and John Coglianese of the Federal Reserve Board.

Long-term unemployment helped define the Great Recession. Countless networks, relationships and skills that bound employee to employer were ripped apart in the global financial crisis. It took about eight years for the unemployment rate to recover from that dislocation. Now economists fear it’s happening all over again, according to a Washington Post analysis. The devastating surge in unemployment in March and April was supposed to be temporary, as businesses shuttered to avert the greatest public health crisis in more than a century. Most workers reported they expected to be called back soon. But nearly half a year later, many of the jobs that were stuck in purgatory are being lost forever. About 33 percent of the employees put on furlough in March were laid off for good by July, according to Gusto, a payroll and benefits firm whose clients include small businesses in all 50 states and D.C. Only 37 percent have been called back to their previous employer. There were 3.7 million U.S. unemployed who had permanently lost their previous job as of July, according to the Labor Department. That figure doubled from February to June, held steady in July, and is expected to hit between 6.2 million and 8.7 million by late this year, according to a new analysis from economists Gabriel Chodorow-Reich of Harvard University and John Coglianese of the Federal Reserve Board.

Delta Air Lines is set to furlough 1,941 pilots in October, the carrier said in a memo to employees yesterday that noted the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and plunging air travel demand, Reuters reported. U.S. airlines have warned they will need to furlough tens of thousands of workers once $25 billion in U.S. government stimulus funds run out in September. The aid, which covered employees’ pay, was meant to help them weather the pandemic and preserve jobs until a recovery, but travel remains depressed. “We are six months into this pandemic and only 25 percent of our revenues have been recovered. Unfortunately, we see few catalysts over the next six months to meaningful change this trajectory,” Delta’s head of flight operations John Laughter said in the memo. He said the airline is “simply overstaffed.” Atlanta-based Delta had originally estimated a surplus of 2,558 pilots but reduced the number of involuntary furloughs following early retirement and voluntary departure programs, a spokeswoman said.