When offices finally reopen, some companies plan to use them in a very different way than they did before the pandemic, giving workers the choice to come in just a few days a week, or not at all.

Some employees are eager to return to the office full time as soon as they can, but others can’t imagine ever going back to the way things were. Offering people more flexibility over where they work can help attract and retain talent, companies say.

Around 10,000 employees at Google recently applied to work remotely or transfer to a different location, and the company approved 85 percent of the requests. The real estate platform Zillow says more women have applied for its jobs since it announced a year ago that most of its 5,900 employees could work from home permanently. The software company Slack, which also offered permanent remote positions last year, said that among recent hires the number of minority workers was 50 percent higher for those who planned to work...

When offices finally reopen, some companies plan to use them in a very different way than they did before the pandemic, giving workers the choice to come in just a few days a week, or not at all.

Some employees are eager to return to the office full time as soon as they can, but others can’t imagine ever going back to the way things were. Offering people more flexibility over where they work can help attract and retain talent, companies say.

Around 10,000 employees at Google recently applied to work remotely or transfer to a different location, and the company approved 85 percent of the requests. The real estate platform Zillow says more women have applied for its jobs since it announced a year ago that most of its 5,900 employees could work from home permanently. The software company Slack, which also offered permanent remote positions last year, said that among recent hires the number of minority workers was 50 percent higher for those who planned to work...

The S&P 500 rose 0.3 percent in early trading after falling slightly on Wednesday. The Nasdaq composite was up 0.3 percent.

The Labor Department reported that initial claims for state unemployment benefits declined slightly last week to 385,000, a decrease of 14,000 from the previous week.

Markets in Europe were slightly higher, with the Stoxx Europe 600 up 0.3 percent. The Bank of England projected on Thursday that inflation in Britain will rise to 4 percent in the last quarter of the year, a level that is double the central bank’s target.

Oil prices rose on Thursday, with West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. crude benchmark, up 0.5 percent to $68.52 a barrel.

Robinhood fell more than 11 percent on Thursday after the company said that early investors could sell up to 97.9 million shares over time. On Wednesday, shares for the stock trading app rose 50 percent in their second day of sharp gains.

Uber fell slightly in early trading Thursday, a day...

They have names that make them sound delicious, like Cookie Coin. Or headed for outer space, like Pluto Coin. Or space-bound and delicious, like AstroCake, which was described this way: “Created 5 minutes ago. SAFE.”

Hype coins, as they’re known, sit squarely on the flashy, speculative end of the cryptocurrency business. Every day, dozens of them are created around the world by developers promising fortunes to would-be investors. It usually ends poorly. The vast majority of these tokens are worthless within a couple of weeks. The developers, on the other hand, can make tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes a lot more.

Despite this track record, hype coins have become the investment of choice for millions of people, most of them men in their 30s, or younger, and convinced that the economy writ large is rigged against them. Some are the same traders who have been leaping into stocks like GameStop and AMC Entertainment. To them, crypto is both a source of hope (in...

The only realistic end of the Covid-19 pandemic lies with widespread vaccinations, but a sizable part of the population doesn’t want them. A broad range of public responses is possible.

At one extreme are government mandates. Everyone could be required to be vaccinated or face severe punishments. At the other extreme are what Cass Sunstein and I called “nudges” in the first edition of our 2008 book. As we define the term, nudges gently guide people without requirements or economic incentives. Informing people about the benefits of vaccinations and making it as easy as possible to get a shot are in this category.

Many interventions fall between these two extremes. We might call those pushes and shoves.

Wisely or not, governments around the world so far have generally rejected the idea of a hard, universal requirement to be vaccinated, in spite of many precedents. For example, George Washington inoculated his troops against smallpox. Individual states have long...

When companies fully reopen their offices, a large number plan to offer employees more flexibility over where they work. A “hybrid office” could make jobs more appealing and help attract and retain diverse candidates. But increasingly, companies are becoming aware of a potential challenge, DealBook’s Sarah Kessler writes for The Times: making sure remote workers don’t get left behind.

In one study that randomly assigned employees at a travel agency to nine months of mostly working at home or mostly working full-time at the office, the at-home staffers were about half as likely as their office counterparts to get a promotion. That was true even though the remote workers were 13 percent more productive, making more calls per minute and taking fewer breaks and sick days.

If certain groups of workers choose remote work more often — say, parents with young children — a bias against promoting remote workers could hurt broader diversity efforts. Here are four ways...

Richard H. Clarida, the Federal Reserve’s vice chair, said in speech on Wednesday that if the economy meets his expectations, he thinks it will be healed enough by the end of next year for the Fed to start raising rates in 2023 — a meaningful statement coming from one of the highest-ranking members of the policy-setting committee.

Mr. Clarida said he expected inflation to moderate but remain slightly above the Fed’s 2 percent target — which the central bank would like to hit and be on track to exceed for a time — with unemployment dropping sharply toward the Fed’s full employment goal.

“I believe that these three necessary conditions for raising the target range for the federal funds rate will have been met by year-end 2022,” Mr. Clarida said.

Since the start of the pandemic, Amazon has ramped up its hiring, bringing on hundreds of thousands of employees worldwide. But challenges to the company’s labor practices are growing quickly, too.

Those challenges were underscored when a hearing officer for the National Labor Relations Board recommended a new union election at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama, saying the company’s conduct during the organizing campaign had precluded a fair vote.

The board’s regional office will rule on the recommendation in the coming weeks. If it leads to a new election, as seems likely, the union would face long odds of victory. But Amazon faces a widening campaign to rein in the power it wields over its employees and their workplace conditions.

Those efforts include a campaign by the Teamsters that would generally circumvent traditional workplace elections and pressure the company through protests, boycotts and even fights against its expansion efforts at the local level....

Customs officials have blocked a commercial fishing boat from bringing tuna and other seafood into the United States, citing what they said was the use of forced labor by its operator, a company based in Fiji.

The Customs and Border Protection agency said on Wednesday that it had found that operators of Hangton No. 112, a long-liner owned by the Hangton Pacific Co. Pte Ltd., had withheld workers’ wages, kept their identity documents and subjected them to debt bondage.

If the vessel tries to dock at a U.S. port, officials said, its cargo would be seized and held until its operator could prove that the fish were not caught using what the agency has described as “modern-day slavery.”

After three months, the seafood could be destroyed, according to the agency, which said that the boat’s operators would have the option to export the fish to a different country.

Customs officials have blocked a commercial fishing boat from bringing tuna and other seafood into the United States, citing what they said was the use of forced labor by its operator, a company based in Fiji.

The Customs and Border Protection agency said on Wednesday that it had found that operators of Hangton No. 112, a long-liner owned by the Hangton Pacific Co. Pte Ltd., had withheld workers’ wages, kept their identity documents and subjected them to debt bondage.

If the vessel tries to dock at a U.S. port, officials said, its cargo would be seized and held until its operator could prove that the fish were not caught using what the agency has described as “modern-day slavery.”

After three months, the seafood could be destroyed, according to the agency, which said that the boat’s operators would have the option to export the fish to a different country.

Richard H. Clarida, the Federal Reserve’s vice chair, said in speech on Wednesday that if the economy meets his expectations, he thinks it will be healed enough by the end of next year for the Fed to start raising rates in 2023 — a meaningful statement coming from one of the highest-ranking members of the policy-setting committee.

Mr. Clarida said he expected inflation to moderate but remain slightly above the Fed’s 2 percent target — which the central bank would like to hit and be on track to exceed for a time — with unemployment dropping sharply toward the Fed’s full employment goal.

“I believe that these three necessary conditions for raising the target range for the federal funds rate will have been met by year-end 2022,” Mr. Clarida said.

Robinhood, meme thyself.

The stock trading app that helped fuel a frenzy by small investors earlier this year soared on Wednesday in trading that had all the hallmarks of the “meme-stock mania” that drove up prices of companies like AMC Entertainment and GameStop.

Robinhood’s shares rose as much as 65 percent to $77, double their price at the end of last week, and trading was briefly paused by the Nasdaq stock exchange. By midmorning, the shares had fallen somewhat and were up about 35 percent. It was a second day of sharp gains after jumping 24 percent on Tuesday.

Robinhood became a publicly traded company only last week. It priced its initial public offering at $38 a share, but the stock stumbled in its first day of trading on Thursday, finishing down more than 8 percent.

General Motors said on Wednesday that it made $2.8 billion in the second quarter and increased its profit forecast for the full year, suggesting the largest U.S. automaker was faring a lot better than expected.

G.M. and other car companies have been forced to idle factories periodically this year because of a global shortage of computer chips. The production slowdown has kept a lid on sales, but it has created shortages of new and used cars, increasing the selling price of cars and trucks.

The industry, like others, is also now growing more concerned about what the spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus will mean for their business. The United Automobile Workers union, G.M., Ford Motor and Stellantis, formerly Fiat Chrysler, said this week that they would go back to requiring all workers to wear masks because of the variant, though they would not mandate vaccinations.

“G.M. had a very strong second quarter and first half of the year,” G.M.’s chief...

The New York Times Company said in a statement on Wednesday announcing its quarterly earnings results that it has eight million subscriptions and expects to add as many this year as it did in 2019, when President Donald J. Trump dominated headlines and a pandemic had yet to melt the global economy. The company estimates that it will have 8.5 million paid print and digital subscriptions by the end of 2021.

Meredith Kopit Levien, the chief executive, said in the statement that the company’s performance was “a testament to the success of our strategy” of focusing on digital subscriptions. She put the potential market size of Times readers at 100 million, adding that there was an opportunity to continue to invest while “daily habits are up for grabs.”

The Times Company reported modest growth in the April-to-June quarter — typically its weakest — adding 142,000 new digital subscribers, with 77,000 for the News app and 65,000 for Cooking and Games. At the end of June, The...

Since the start of the pandemic, Amazon has ramped up its hiring, bringing on hundreds of thousands of employees worldwide. But challenges to the company’s labor practices are growing quickly, too.

Those challenges were underscored when a hearing officer for the National Labor Relations Board recommended a new union election at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama, saying the company’s conduct during the organizing campaign had precluded a fair vote.

The board’s regional office will rule on the recommendation in the coming weeks. If it leads to a new election, as seems likely, the union would face long odds of victory. But Amazon faces a widening campaign to rein in the power it wields over its employees and their workplace conditions.

Those efforts include a campaign by the Teamsters that would generally circumvent traditional workplace elections and pressure the company through protests, boycotts and even fights against its expansion efforts at the local level....

Some of the nation’s largest employers, for months reluctant to wade into the fraught issue of whether Covid-19 vaccinations should be mandatory for workers, have in recent days been compelled to act as infections have surged again.

On Tuesday, Tyson Foods told its 120,000 workers in offices, slaughterhouses and poultry plants across the country that they would need to be vaccinated by Nov. 1 as a “condition of employment.” And Microsoft, which employs roughly 100,000 people in the United States, said it would require proof of vaccination for all employees, vendors and guests to gain access to its offices.

Last week, Google said it would require employees who returned to the company’s offices to be vaccinated, while Disney announced a mandate for all salaried and nonunion hourly workers who work on site.

Other companies, including Walmart, the largest private employer in the United States, and Lyft and Uber, have taken a less forceful approach, mandating...

WASHINGTON — The U.S. economy is heading toward an increasingly uncertain autumn as a surge in the Delta variant of the coronavirus coincides with the expiration of expanded unemployment benefits for millions of people, complicating what was supposed to be a return to normal as a wave of workers re-entered the labor market.

That dynamic is creating an unexpected challenge for the Biden administration and the Federal Reserve in managing what has been a fairly swift recovery from a recession. For months, officials at the White House and the central bank have pointed toward the fall as a potential turning point for an economy that is struggling to fully shake off the effects of the pandemic — particularly in the job market, which remains millions of positions below prepandemic levels.

The widespread availability of Covid-19 vaccines, the reopening of schools and the expiration of enhanced jobless benefits have been seen as a potent cocktail that should prod workers off...

The federal government continues to pressure private companies to introduce coronavirus vaccine mandates to help the U.S. raise its inoculation rates. To make it easier, the F.D.A. is accelerating its timetable to fully approve the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, aiming to complete the process early next month.

And yesterday, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York said the city would require proof of vaccination for people to eat indoors, exercise at gyms and go to shows. President Biden said other cities should follow New York’s lead. “You have to give proof that you’ve been vaccinated or you can’t come in,” he said.

These recent moves address the growing class divide in vaccinations that DealBook pointed out on Monday. Some of the latest mandates cover frontline, blue-collar workers who are often more exposed to the virus, but have lower vaccination rates, in addition to office-based, white-collar workers who have been the focus thus far, despite high rates of...

“You need to get people’s attention,” says Hayli Martenez, 13, an eighth grader who sells lemonade outside her home in Kankakee, Ill. Take advantage of the human eye’s attraction to bright colors. When Martenez started, at age 10, she had just two lemonade colors: pink and yellow. Now she sells nearly 50 flavors in dozens of hues, including one she calls Purple Monkey (lemonade plus grape-pineapple flavoring). “Be creative with your flavors and names,” she says.

Don’t assume early hardship means doom. The summer after she set up her Haylibug Lemonadez stand three years ago, local health officials shut her down. A Chicago television station covered the story. This July, Gov. J B Pritzker signed a bill known as “Hayli’s law,” which prohibits health departments from regulating the sale of lemonade by children under 16. After Martenez testified before lawmakers in Springfield, she served them her favorite blue-colored lemonade.

Customers might be looking for more than...

When Salesforce Tower in San Francisco fully reopens this year after 16 months of pandemic-induced closure, one of its more unusual features will be found in the basement.

A series of pipes and cast-in-concrete holding tanks, arrayed on two levels in the parking garage like some hidden microbrewery, will take the dirty water generated by the structure’s daily operations through a six-step filtration process and return it as clean, nonpotable water for use in toilets and drip irrigation.

Taking up the space of 16 cars, the black-water system, so called because it treats all wastewater, including from toilets and showers, will filter an estimated 30,000 gallons per workday, or 7.8 million a year. The system, the most comprehensive of its kind in a high-rise tower in the nation, is designed for people to visit — each step of the process is labeled, said Amanda von Almen, head of sustainable built environment at Salesforce.

OBER-RAMSTADT, Germany — On a highway south of Frankfurt recently, Thomas Schmieder maneuvered his Scania tractor-trailer and its load of house paint into the far right lane. Then he flicked a switch you won’t find on most truck dashboards.

Outside the cab a contraption started to unfold from the roof, looking like a clothes-drying rack with an upside-down sled welded to the top. As Mr. Schmieder continued driving, a video display showed the metal skids rising up and pushing gently against wires running overhead.

The cab became very quiet as the diesel engine cut out and electric motors took over. The truck was still a truck, but now it was powered like many trains or street cars.

There’s a debate over how to make the trucking industry free of emissions, and whether batteries or hydrogen fuel cells are the best way to fire up electric motors in big vehicles. Mr. Schmieder was part of a test of a third alternative: a system that feeds electricity to trucks as...

This episode contains strong language.

Bartenders, sous chefs, wait staff — at the moment, managers in the U.S. hospitality industry are struggling to fill a range of roles at their establishments.

One owner of a gourmet burger restaurant in Houston said that before the pandemic a job opening could easily get 100 applicants. Now, she might get one or two. “I had never seen it like this before in my career,” she told us. “I’ve been doing this for over 25 years.”

These managers blame pandemic unemployment benefits for the dearth of talent. Employees say that the pandemic has opened their eyes to the realities of work.

We spoke to workers and managers about why it has become so hard for the hospitality industry to get staff back through their doors.