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A ‘wave’ of layoffs is coming for $100,000/year white-collar jobs

By Tommy Flemm 1 year ago

Billionaire bond investor Jeffrey Gundlach, the CEO of $135 billion DoubleLine Capital, sees the potential for a “wave of more higher-end unemployment’ hitting white-collar workers making more than $100,000 per year as employers increasingly question the value these employees bring.

In 11 weeks, more than 42 million Americans filed for unemployment insurance as the COVID-19 pandemic wrecked the economy. The bulk of these job losses hit lower-income households the hardest.

“A lot of times it’s not the earthquake, it’s the fire,” Gundlach said on a webcast for the DoubleLine Total Return Bond Fund (DBLTX), later adding that he could “easily see layoffs in various industries” affecting higher earners.

Gundlach, who runs the Los Angeles-based bond investment firm, explained that one of the outcomes of remote work is it reveals who produces and who doesn’t.

“What people may have learned for white-collar services jobs, in particular, during the work-from-home lockdown situation,

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2021 health insurance rates are coming out despite ‘unprecedented uncertainty’

By Tommy Flemm 1 year ago

Health insurance premium rates are starting to come in for 2021, giving people an idea for what insurance may cost for the first time since the coronavirus crisis began. But not much more than an idea.

The first rates proposed and released to the public — from Vermont, Washington, D.C., and Oregon — provide a glimpse into what health insurance will cost in 2021, but almost every insurance company that referenced the pandemic stressed the unprecedented level of uncertainty for 2021.

Rates are calculated by insurers and proposed to states every spring for the following year, usually with data from the complete year before, which in this case would be 2019. States analyze the rates and decide if they’re fair, and negotiate with insurers if not. Not all states publish proposed rates as they get them from insurers, but usually by August the rates are finalized, collected, and published on

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Why a recovery’s not coming till 2021

By Tommy Flemm 1 year ago

When we asked Yahoo Finance readers earlier this month what questions they have about the coronavirus recession, two came up repeatedly: Why are stocks going up when the economic news is so bad? And when will this mess be over?

Nobody can interpret the stock market with 100% accuracy, but there’s some logic behind the surge in stocks since mid-March. Markets began to reckon with the coronavirus pandemic in late February, with the S&P 500 index plunging 34% from Feb. 19 through March 23. That nosedive came as investors figured out that a sharp recession was coming, with millions of unemployed and massive losses in industries such as travel and retail.

Investors got that right, and the upturn in stocks since late March reflects investors anticipating a recovery. The Federal Reserve has provided unprecedented amounts of monetary stimulus and pledged to do more, if needed, bolstering investor confidence. Congress has

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Daily coronavirus testing ‘likely’ coming to Ford plants, CEO Jim Hackett says

By Tommy Flemm 1 year ago

The partial reopening of the U.S. economy amid the coronavirus outbreak includes automaker Ford (F), which on Monday began operation of factories with new safety measures like socially distanced workstations and temperature screenings.

But a forthcoming protection may prove most important: testing.

Jim Hackett, the president and CEO of Ford, told Yahoo Finance that the company will “likely” conduct daily coronavirus testing of employees at its auto factories when the technology becomes available.

“Testing right now isn’t reliable enough that we would test people every day,” Hackett says. “But we believe that will be coming soon — and that’s likely to be in the protocols.”

To reopen plants, Ford stocked facilities with disinfectant and protective equipment, and it plans to institute daily and weekly cleanings, as well as daily COVID-19 surveys that require workers to confirm the absence of symptoms before gaining entry to a factory, according to a guidebook 

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US government unlikely to take stakes in hotels coming out of COVID-19 pandemic: Hilton CFO

By Tommy Flemm 1 year ago

Hilton’s top two executives have been lobbying the U.S. government hard for some form of liquidity relief for the small business owners that typically pay for the right to operate the company’s hotels in the U.S.

One of those Hilton executives — CFO Kevin Jacobs — says investors shouldn’t be concerned about the U.S. government taking stakes in hotel chains as a condition for liquidity relief. That would be unlike what has happened with the major airlines, where the U.S. government was given warrants as part of a $50 billion aid package for the industry.

“We’re lobbying on behalf of the front line team members to make sure there’s relief overall available for the industry so people can remain employed,” Jacobs said on Yahoo Finance’s The First Trade. “We are not lobbying for anything on behalf of ourselves and don’t expect anything like the government taking stakes in capital light

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