NBA legend and team owner Michael Jordan agreed to purchase an undisclosed stake in DraftKings Inc. and become a special adviser to its board of directors.

Shares of the online sports-gaming company recently rose 3% Wednesday; the stock was up as much as 12% earlier in the session.

DraftKings said Wednesday that Mr. Jordan, an NBA hall of...

United Airlines Holdings Inc. on Wednesday said it plans to cut 16,370 staff as part of efforts to halve its domestic workforce amid a pandemic-driven slump in passenger demand.

The cuts are short of the 36,000 potential job losses the airline warned were possible in July. Most of the workers would leave when federal support expires on Oct. 1. Thousands of United employees already have taken voluntary retirement and extended leave packages in recent months.

But there is reason to be optimistic, albeit cautiously: Many employers are still hiring. More than half of small and midsize companies plan to hire full-time employees this year, according to an August survey of 600 human-resources and finance chiefs by Paycor, an HR software company. And while the percentage of LinkedIn members hired into new jobs fell 7.4% in July compared with the year before, it jumped 57.5% from June, according to LinkedIn’s August Workforce Report.

But today’s jobs landscape is wildly different from the red-hot labor market of early 2020. An open position can yield hundreds of applications. Many job interviews are still happening over laptop screens, and companies’ hiring needs are changing as fast as the economic outlook.

“When every day is different and you don’t know what to expect, people need to think on their feet and get creative and take risks,” said Clara Shih, founder and chief executive of digital-engagement company Hearsay...

The coronavirus pandemic has shown just how far Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has come since Lisa Su became chief executive six years ago.

Long an also-ran in the U.S. semiconductor industry behind Intel Corp., AMD is surging. AMD chips used in the data centers powering remote work are in hot demand. And personal computers and popular gaming consoles using its chips also are flying off the shelf with people stuck at home, prompting the company to raise its full-year sales outlook amid strong demand.

The start of the Major League Baseball season, which came more than 100 days later than usual due to the coronavirus pandemic, drew significantly higher TV ratings than it did last year, a boon for sports networks that have had very little live content to run for months.

Games that aired on national TV during the opening weekend—July 23 to 26—had more than twice as many viewers as a year ago, according to data from the MLB Network. Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN said the first 12 games it aired through late Thursday averaged 1.16...

Business executives say they are getting a better grip on what a world transformed by the coronavirus looks like, giving them more confidence to lay out strategies that account for the new reality.

Corporate leaders are changing company operations and resetting assumptions, after having absorbed months of fresh information about how customers act with everyday life often marked by working and staying home, traveling less and social distancing. In response to the emerging environment, businesses are retooling pricing, store...

Airlines are asking the government to again step in with funds to help them prevent tens of thousands of job losses.

Airlines were barred from laying off or furloughing employees this summer as a condition of the $25 billion in aid they received under the broad economic stimulus package passed in March. Those restrictions will be lifted Oct. 1, and U.S. airlines have outlined furlough plans that could affect over 75,000 pilots, flight attendants, mechanics and other workers when that day comes.

For Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella, buying TikTok would mark the boldest in a string of big deals and could reshape a tech giant that has lately thrived by focusing on corporate customers.

Microsoft is in talks to potentially spend billions of dollars to acquire the U.S. operations of TikTok, the Chinese-owned video-sharing app, The Wall Street Journal and others reported Friday. The discussions come as President Trump said that he was considering steps that would effectively ban the app from the U.S....

When sports fans return to watch their teams play live again, many of them may not need a ticket.

Several pro sports teams, including the New York Mets and the Los Angeles Football Club, are testing facial-recognition technology in stadiums. The idea is to admit fans for entry by authenticating their faces, to make the process as touchless as possible during the coronavirus pandemic.

Big,...

In early March, Cara Soulia was preparing for a spring filled with photo shoots for local schools. Instead, the family photographer from Needham, Mass., started taking pictures of families quarantined by the coronavirus pandemic, creating a global project that has raised more than $3.25 million for different charities.

Ms. Soulia had been thinking about how she could document the spreading pandemic and its effect on society, so when Kristen Collins, a friend and business consultant, suggested she offer to photograph local...

For all of Elon Musk’s public complaining about the handling of the pandemic, Tesla Inc. is shaping up to be one of the biggest business winners of the Covid-19 era.

After years of losses that made many investors wonder if the Silicon Valley car maker could ever operate in the black, Tesla has sustained a profit through one of the worst economic shocks in history, helped in part by the sale of regulatory credits. It is expanding rapidly at a time when larger rivals are losing money and cutting production, even as they chase...

Employers across the country are being sued by the families of workers who contend their loved ones contracted lethal cases of Covid-19 on the job, a new legal front that shows the risks of reopening workplaces.

Walmart Inc., Safeway Inc., Tyson Foods Inc. and some health-care facilities have been sued for gross negligence or wrongful death since the coronavirus pandemic began unfolding in March. Employees’ loved ones contend the companies failed to protect workers from the deadly virus and should compensate their family...

Stock splits have all but disappeared from corporate playbooks, even though history shows shares of companies that split their stock often see a bump in price.

Stocks in the S&P 500 tend to rise 5% in the year following share splits, including 2.5% immediately following the announcement, according to research from Nasdaq Inc. on splits between 2012 and 2018.

“Splits...

In Personal Board of Directors, top business leaders talk about the people they turn to for advice, and how those people have shaped their perspective and helped them succeed. Previous installments from the series are here.

David Cote led a legendary turnaround of Honeywell International Inc. over 15 years, but it took him a long time to find his path to success.

Growing...

Big oil companies endured one of their worst second quarters ever and are positioning themselves for prolonged pain as the coronavirus pandemic continues to sap global demand for fossil fuels.

Exxon Mobil Corp. posted a quarterly loss for the second straight quarter for the first time this century on Friday, reporting a loss of $1.1 billion, compared with a profit of $3.1 billion a year ago. Exxon, the largest U.S. oil company, hadn’t reported back-to-back losses for at least 22 years, according to Dow Jones Market Data,...

Microsoft Corp. has paused negotiations to buy the U.S. operations of the video-sharing app TikTok after President Trump said late Friday he opposed the deal, according to people familiar with the matter.

The president’s statements spurred TikTok to make additional concessions, including agreeing to add as many as 10,000 jobs in the U.S. over the next three years, but it isn’t clear if those will alter Mr. Trump’s stance, one of the people said. The founder of TikTok parent Bytedance Ltd., Zhang Yiming, also agreed to sell...

Josie Natori is back in the office, but most of her staff isn’t.

The founder and chief executive of women’s apparel company Natori Co. returned to her office on Madison Avenue in New York City in early June. Few others have returned to the business’s midtown Manhattan neighborhood—or Natori’s 50-person office and showroom. Cleaning crews have continued to maintain the premises, and mail and packages are being delivered, but the building’s lobby and halls are empty.

The pandemic may have forced Apple Inc. to delay its big iPhone launch by a few weeks, but there is a silver lining in this particular cloud.

During its fiscal third-quarter earnings call on Thursday, Apple confirmed that this year’s crop of flagship iPhones will launch a few weeks later than the normal late September window. This counts as a major disclosure from a company that normally doesn’t breathe a word about future products, though it was also Apple’s worst-kept secret by this point. The Wall Street Journal reported...

Ann Mukherjee became chairman and chief executive of Pernod Ricard SA’s North American business in December. Four months later, the coronavirus pandemic had shut bars and restaurants around the globe. And she quickly learned a lesson: When the facts on the ground are changing every day, it can be a mistake to prepare for an uncertain future too soon.

Ms. Mukherjee, who was born in India and raised in the U.S., now lives in Dallas, where she has witnessed the pandemic’s whipsaw effect on business as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott opened...

Questionable online sales tactics used by some foreign merchants have been brought into focus after the federal government said this week that mysterious seed packages postmarked from China may be an e-commerce scam.

The U.S. Agriculture Department said that “suspicious, unsolicited packages of seed that appear to be coming from China” are potentially part of a brushing scheme. In such a scheme, sellers or their accomplices ship out packages containing lightweight goods of trivial value, which can then be used to log fake...

In the U.S., 10% of small-business owners are Latino immigrants. When the pandemic hit, wreaking havoc on small businesses around the country, only 29% of those owners applied for assistance from the government.

That’s in contrast to nearly 80% of small businesses overall who have applied for aid.

The discrepancy reflects the particular...

A historic distribution agreement between AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. and Hollywood studio Universal Pictures is sowing discord and confusion in an industry already reeling from the coronavirus pandemic.

AMC, the world’s largest theater chain, and Universal agreed to shrink the time between a movie’s opening in theaters and when customers can rent it to watch at home—to just 17 days, from 75. The two companies had been at public loggerheads over the issue of when to release movies for home viewing just a few months ago....