Walmart’s vaccination mandate, for example, doesn’t cover the company’s most vulnerable employees: workers at its stores and warehouses. The retailer, the biggest private employer in the United States, announced mandatory inoculation for employees at its headquarters and for managers who travel domestically. For a sense of scale, about 17,000 of Walmart’s 1.6 million employees are expected to work in new headquarters in Bentonville, Ark.

With the coronavirus spreading across the country and hospitalizations rising again, and public health officials warning that the Delta variant carries new risks even for vaccinated people, big businesses are rethinking their plans.

Some are delaying their plans to bring workers back to the office, and others are restoring mask requirements for customers. In the last week, several have also imposed vaccine mandates, after having held off on such a step for months.

SALT LAKE CITY — Tyler Holt summed up the problem his Utah landscaping business faces every year. “People who want to be in the job force want stability — if they want to work, they work full time,” he said. “Locally there’s just no workers who want to do anything seasonal.”

The complaint has been echoed not only by landscapers in Utah, but also by amusement parks in Wyoming, restaurants in Rhode Island, crab trappers in Maryland, camps in Colorado and thousands of other businesses around the country that depend on seasonal workers from abroad to work lower-wage nonfarm jobs.

The scramble for these temporary guest workers has been intense in recent years, as the jobless rate inched down and tensions over immigration policy ratcheted up. But this year, after the coronavirus pandemic first halted and then seriously constrained the stream of foreign workers into the United States, the competition has been particularly fierce.

The Biden administration responded to...

The tide has begun to turn on corporate vaccine mandates, with companies including Disney, Facebook, Google and Walmart recently introducing stricter requirements for employees returning to the workplace. But the policies come with some important caveats as executives juggle public health, labor relations and the bottom line.

Walmart’s vaccination mandate doesn’t cover the company’s most vulnerable employees: workers at its stores and warehouses. The retailer, the biggest private employer in the U.S., announced mandatory inoculation for employees at its headquarters and for managers who travel domestically. For a sense of scale, about 17,000 of Walmart’s 1.6 million employees work at its headquarters. For workers who fall outside the requirement, Walmart is doubling its cash incentive to get immunized, to $150.

Unions and labor shortages complicate the picture. One fear that companies have with broad vaccine mandates is that they could drive away employees at a...

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The pandemic has worked out far better for the group of oil producers known as OPEC Plus than might have been expected a year ago. After a self-destructive price war, and a brief episode when some oil prices fell below zero, Saudi Arabia, Russia and their allies have emerged in a position that may be stronger than when the lockdowns began.

Prices have been gliding higher since November, up 85 percent to about $75 a barrel for Brent crude, as global economies begin to consume more oil while OPEC Plus keeps a tight leash on output.

As the oil producers prepare for their monthly meeting on Thursday, there is growing talk that the price could eventually hit $100 for the first time since 2014.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies are holding some high cards at the moment. More and possibly explosive growth in demand is expected in the coming months as economies recover from the coronavirus pandemic. Crude oil production in the United...

Not since the government sued to break up Microsoft in the late 1990s has there been greater demand for people who know the ins and outs of corporate competition law. That is only certain to increase after a federal judge dismissed a states’ antitrust case against Facebook on Monday and said the Federal Trade Commission’s complaint against the social network needed to be revised.

The rulings put the Facebook case back into the hands of Lina Khan, a fierce critic of the tech industry, who recently became chair of the F.T.C., an agency that regulates antitrust. Last week, bills aimed at weakening the companies’ grip on the industry also advanced in the House.

The clamor for talent extends to lobbying firms and economists, who can help the companies formulate counterarguments and provide expert testimony about the companies’ market power. But it is particularly acute in the legal profession.

The tech giants are already flooding courtrooms with large teams of...

Even as life returns to many New York City neighborhoods, its big commercial districts are awash with empty office space. Most workers haven’t yet returned — and it’s unclear if they all will. That uncertainty is terrifying the city’s biggest office landlords, and many of them are going to great lengths to retain and attract tenants.

Lower rents or free months in multiyear leases are now de rigueur. But landlords are also trying to entice new and returning tenants with sweeping redesigns and new technology that can quickly refashion office space based on needs. They are dangling upscale new clubs and food halls available largely for tenants, hoping to draw back employees starved for workplace socializing while also pursuing new business opportunities. In one building on West 26th Street near the Hudson River, the owners — the private equity firm Blackstone and the building owner and developer RXR Realty — are showing off a 600-square-foot speakeasy tucked away in a corner...

The artwork of elementary school students decorates the office windows behind home plate at Richmond County Bank Ballpark in Staten Island. One encourages residents not to litter. Another drawing, of the stadium’s infamous Staten Island pizza rat mascot, reads: “Better Days Are Coming!”

But empty liquor bottles litter the nearby concourse, and dandelions and other weeds grow in the outfield.

For the first time in 20 years, the ballpark is not the home of the Staten Island Yankees. In fact, nothing is happening at the city-owned stadium, which covers about six acres and offers waterfront views of Lower Manhattan.

The pandemic has worked out far better for the group of oil producers known as OPEC Plus than might have been expected a year ago. After a self-destructive price war, and a brief episode when some oil prices fell below zero, Saudi Arabia, Russia and their allies have emerged in a position that may be stronger than when the lockdowns began.

Prices have been gliding higher since November, up 85 percent to about $75 a barrel for Brent crude, as global economies begin to consume more oil while OPEC Plus keeps a tight leash on output.

As the oil producers prepare for their monthly meeting on Thursday, there is growing talk that the price could eventually hit $100 for the first time since 2014.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies are holding some high cards at the moment. More and possibly explosive growth in demand is expected in the coming months as economies recover from the coronavirus pandemic. Crude oil production in the United...

The decisions were a major blow to attempts to rein in Big Tech. The judge said one of the complaints, from the Federal Trade Commission, lacked facts and gave the agency 30 days to refile it.

In a major blow to attempts to shrink the power of Big Tech, a federal judge yesterday threw out two antitrust lawsuits brought against Facebook by the Federal Trade Commission and more than 40 states. The judge, James Boasberg, said the federal suit failed to provide enough facts to back claims that Facebook had a monopoly over “personal social networking.” He said the states had waited too long to bring their case, which centers on deals made in 2012 and 2014. The F.T.C. has 30 days to refile its case.

The 53-page ruling is worth a read, given the current debate on what is or isn’t a monopoly. In case you don’t have time, we pulled some of the most telling passages, which provide a clear picture of the hurdles the government has to clear if it wants to take on Big Tech in the future.

As a single woman with no children, Karen Callahan is putting together the financial pieces that will protect her for a potentially long life on her own. A large piece of her puzzle: getting as much Social Security income as she can.

Ms. Callahan, 67, of Marlborough, Mass., is holding off on claiming her benefits until she turns 70, when she will be eligible for $3,100 a month. If she claimed today, she said, her benefit would be permanently reduced to about $2,500.

The income from a web design business she owns will cover her expenses until 70, including a $375 monthly condo fee on her townhouse. In excellent health and able to bench press 120 pounds, Ms. Callahan expects to live long enough to get more in lifetime benefits by waiting than by claiming less for a longer time.

“Hell’s bells — I have put the money in, and I am going for the max,” she said.

For many older single women, as well as for divorced women and widows, getting the most out of Social...

WASHINGTON — A trade dispute over Canadian lumber that began when Ronald Reagan was president has become a political problem for President Biden, with home builders and members of Congress urging the administration to try to strike a deal that could help bring down the cost of critical building materials.

Lumber prices remain far above prepandemic levels, even after falling sharply in recent weeks, an increase driven in part by strong housing demand and an abundance of home improvement projects during the pandemic. The higher-than-normal prices are among a wide range of supply chain complications that have cropped up as the economy picks up steam.

But unlike other commodities that have been in short supply, lumber is also the subject of a long-running trade dispute between the United States and Canada, adding a layer of diplomatic intrigue to the scramble for in-demand building materials. The two countries are locked in a thorny disagreement over softwood lumber,...

The vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna set off a persistent immune reaction in the body that may protect against the coronavirus for years, scientists reported on Monday.

The findings add to growing evidence that most people immunized with the mRNA vaccines may not need boosters, so long as the virus and its variants do not evolve much beyond their current forms — which is not guaranteed. People who recovered from Covid-19 before being vaccinated may not need boosters even if the virus does make a significant transformation.

“It’s a good sign for how durable our immunity is from this vaccine,” said Ali Ellebedy, an immunologist at Washington University in St. Louis who led the study, which was published in the journal Nature.

The study did not consider the coronavirus vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson, but Dr. Ellebedy said he expected the immune response to be less durable than that produced by mRNA vaccines.

William Spriggs, a professor at Howard University, wrote an open letter last year to his fellow economists. Reacting to the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, he began the letter with a question: “Is now a teachable moment for economists?”

Slamming what he saw as attempts to deny racial discrimination, Dr. Spriggs argued that economists should stop looking for a reason other than racism — some “omitted variable” — to account for why African Americans are falling further behind in the economy.

“Hopefully, this moment will cause economists to reflect and rethink how we study racial disparities,” wrote Dr. Spriggs, who is Black. “Trapped in the dominant conversation, far too often African American economists find themselves having to prove that African Americans are equal.”

After a year in which demands for racial justice acquired new resonance, Dr. Spriggs and others are pushing back against a strongly held tenet of economics: that differences in...

MARYLAND HEIGHTS, Mo. — By lunchtime, the representatives from the recruiting agency Express Employment Professionals decided to pack up and leave the job fair in the St. Louis suburb of Maryland Heights. Hardly anyone had shown up.

“We were hoping we would see prepandemic levels,” said Courtney Boyle, general manager of Express. After all, Missouri had just cut off federal unemployment benefits.

Business owners had complained that the assistance, as Gov. Mike Parson put it, “incentivized people to stay out of the work force.” He made Missouri one of the first four states to halt the federal aid; a total of 26 have said they will do so by next month. But in the St. Louis metropolitan area, where the jobless rate was 4.2 percent in May, those who expected the June 12 termination would unleash a flood of job seekers were disappointed.

Work-force development officials said they had seen virtually no uptick in applicants since the governor’s announcement, which...

William Spriggs, a professor at Howard University, wrote an open letter last year to his fellow economists. Reacting to the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, he began the letter with a question: “Is now a teachable moment for economists?”

Slamming what he saw as attempts to deny racial discrimination, Dr. Spriggs argued that economists should stop looking for a reason other than racism — some “omitted variable” — to account for why African Americans are falling further behind in the economy.

“Hopefully, this moment will cause economists to reflect and rethink how we study racial disparities,” wrote Dr. Spriggs, who is Black. “Trapped in the dominant conversation, far too often African American economists find themselves having to prove that African Americans are equal.”

After a year in which demands for racial justice acquired new resonance, Dr. Spriggs and others are pushing back against a strongly held tenet of economics: that differences in...

As a single woman with no children, Karen Callahan is putting together the financial pieces that will protect her for a potentially long life on her own. A large piece of her puzzle: getting as much Social Security income as she can.

Ms. Callahan, 67, of Marlborough, Mass., is holding off on claiming her benefits until she turns 70, when she will be eligible for $3,100 a month. If she claimed today, she said, her benefit would be permanently reduced to about $2,500.

The income from a web design business she owns will cover her expenses until 70, including a $375 monthly condo fee on her townhouse. In excellent health and able to bench press 120 pounds, Ms. Callahan expects to live long enough to get more in lifetime benefits by waiting than by claiming less for a longer time.

“Hell’s bells — I have put the money in, and I am going for the max,” she said.

For many older single women, as well as for divorced women and widows, getting the most out of Social...