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States are quickly depleting funds set aside as millions of laid-off workers apply for unemployment-insurance benefits offered by state governments, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Treasury Department data. Nearly half of U.S. states have logged double-digit percentage declines in their trust-fund balances since the end of February, the month before the coronavirus pandemic triggered shutdowns that led to widespread job losses and record numbers of jobless claims. States use the money to pay regular unemployment benefits, while the extra $600 payments recently added for workers laid off during the pandemic are funded through a federal stimulus package signed into law last month. From the end of February to mid-April, New York had used about half of the trust-fund money it had on tap, representing one of the steepest declines among states. Massachusetts also has used up about half of its available funds. California registered the third-largest decrease over this period: Its trust-fund balance had dropped nearly 40 percent since February to $1.9 billion in mid-April.

Art Van Furniture, the Midwestern furniture chain, originally told its employees last month that they’d be entitled to keep their coverage for 90 days as the company kept operating and started auctioning off its retail stores, Bloomberg News reported. Then the novel coronavirus spread and more states forced stores to shutter, turning the retailer’s slow liquidation into more of a fire sale. Workers learned their health benefits were getting cut off. Art Van’s workers sent a letter yesterday to the company’s private equity owner, Thomas H. Lee Partners, asking it to pay their health insurance for 90 days, and to create a fund for out-of-pocket costs. The employees’ trouble offers a sense of what might be coming for many struggling retailers. Stores are failing fast, leaving workers in many cases with no alternative but to lobby for compensation from owners, even as they push for broader legal and legislative protections, said Jack Raisner, a lawyer who often represents workers, including in the Art Van case. Art Van filed for bankruptcy in March, but weeks later it switched to a more accelerated liquidation. With its troubles mounting, the retailer terminated workers’ health benefits without the notice otherwise required by law. The U.S.’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act requires employers to give 60 days’ notice before mass layoffs. Some of the workers laid off in March filed a lawsuit in Art Van’s bankruptcy court citing the violation of the terms of the act.

The oil and gas industry shed nearly 51,000 drilling and refining jobs in March, a 9 percent reduction that is likely to get worse as futures prices fell into negative territory yesterday, Bloomberg News reported. March’s job losses increased by 15,000 when ancillary jobs such as construction, manufacturing of drilling equipment and shipping are included, according to BW Research Partnership, a research consultancy, which analyzed Department of Labor data combined with the firm’s own survey data of about 30,000 energy companies. “We’re looking at anywhere between five and seven years of job growth wiped out in a month,” Philip Jordan, the company’s vice president said in an interview. “What makes it sort of scary is this really is just the beginning.” The price on the futures contract for West Texas crude that is due to expire Tuesday fell into negative territory — minus $37.63 a barrel — with the pandemic bringing the economy to a standstill and American energy companies running out of room to store oil. The price on the futures contract due a month later settled at $20.43 per barrel. An unprecedented output deal by OPEC and allied members a week ago to curb supply is proving too little too late in the face of a one-third collapse in global demand. With no end in sight, and producers around the world continuing to pump, that’s causing a fire-sale among traders who don’t have access to storage.

A state-run program that helps businesses cut costs while retaining staff is becoming an increasingly common strategy to fight the economic toll of the coronavirus pandemic, the Wall Street Journal reported. State labor departments are seeing a swift increase in employer applications for programs known as workshares that allow companies to reduce worker hours and employees to collect prorated unemployment benefits to help offset lost wages, avoiding full layoffs. Such programs are available in more than half of states, which together account for about 70 percent of all U.S. payrolls. States including Texas, Oregon, Colorado, Wisconsin and Arkansas say they have experienced a rise in company applications for the programs since the coronavirus caused businesses to begin shutting down in mid-March. That has translated into a higher number of workers drawing on workshare benefits. Across the U.S., 26,000 people were receiving unemployment benefits through workshare in the week ended March 28, up from 9,000 in the same week from a year earlier, according to the Labor Department.

The toll of the coronavirus on air transportation is well known: It’s emptied airports and pushed carriers to bankruptcy. Mass transit employs almost as many people as air transport in the U.S., according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — and it’s also in a perilous state, Bloomberg Businessweek reported. While the airlines’ catastrophe followed a decade of record profits, transit ridership in the U.S. since 2014 had already been declining, a result of cheap gas, the emergence of ride-hailing, and decaying infrastructure. Now experts predict that U.S. rail and bus systems may never fully recover from the pandemic. That could present new obstacles to millions of low-income commuters and set cities on a course toward heavier congestion and failed climate goals. As shelter-in-place orders and business closures have kept millions of workers at home, the most-used transit systems are carrying 70 percent fewer riders than usual, according to the American Public Transportation Association. Those riders left include workers in essential industries — nurses, janitors, grocery and pharmacy clerks, and others that state and local governments deem pandemic-critical. About 2.8 million of these use public transit, making up 36 percent of all riders, according to an analysis of 2018 U.S. Census Bureau data by TransitCenter, a think tank.

A U.S. judge ruled yesterday that bankrupt Puerto Rico cannot fund more than $300 million in annual pension and health costs for its municipalities, but suspended the effective date of the order for three weeks due to the ongoing coronavirus health crisis, Reuters reported. Puerto Rico’s federally created financial oversight board sued the U.S. commonwealth’s governor and fiscal agency in July, contending a new law authorizing the funding does not comply with its fiscal plan and violates the 2016 federal PROMESA Act, which established the board and a restructuring process for Puerto Rico’s $120 billion of debt and pension obligations. Judge Laura Taylor Swain, who is hearing Puerto Rico’s bankruptcy, voided Law 29, a measure enacted last May to aid the Caribbean island’s cash-strapped municipalities by eliminating their obligation to pay for employee health and pension costs. The order, however, will not take effect until May 6 due to “the additional challenges facing the parties during the COVID-19 public health crisis,” according to Judge Swain’s ruling.

Best Buy Co. Inc. said yesterday that it would furlough about 51,000 hourly U.S. store employees and that its sales dropped about 5 percent in the first two months of the current quarter, as the electronics retailer kept its stores shut due to the coronavirus pandemic, Reuters reported. The company said that starting next week, some corporate employees would also participate in voluntary reduced work weeks and furloughs, while its top management and board would take a pay cut. Best Buy, however, would retain about 82 percent of its full-time store and field employees. The company said sales grew about 25 percent during an 8-day period ended March 20, a day before the company announced its decision to switch to a curbside delivery model, as people shopped for work-from-home equipment, gaming-related products as well as products needed to freeze food. Best Buy added that domestic online sales surged over 250 percent from a year earlier, with half the sales coming from customers who picked-up their products from stores. However, store closures and decreased footfall have dented demand, and sales dropped 30 percent from March 21 through April 11, Best Buy said.