Commerce

BY ANGELA RACHIDI When the coronavirus pandemic hit American shores in early 2020, questions emerged over how employers and employees would handle the anticipated need for workers to take time away for illness or to care for family members. Without a national paid leave law,

BY MATT WEIDINGER The Washington Post reports President Joe Biden’s next trillion-dollar spending plan “is expected to devote hundreds of billions of dollars to new programs,” including “$225 billion for child-care funding; $225 billion for paid family and medical leave; $200 billion

BY JAMES PETHOKOUKIS  What sort of shape is the American economy in after a year of the pandemic? Maybe better than you might guess. Even better than many economists might have guessed. As the econ team at Goldman Sachs notes:

BY JAMES PETHOKOUKIS President Biden’s campaign tax plan was full of tax increases, some $3 trillion worth. But a wealth tax wasn’t one of them. And, according to The New York Times, a wealth tax is “not among the top revenue-raisers that Democratic

BY KEVIN R. KOSAR Last week, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hauled Postmaster General Louis DeJoy before it and spent the better part of five and a half hours denouncing him. In part, majority Democrats were politicking — they rehashed

BY DANIEL LYONS Last week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted a report and order establishing the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program (EBB), a $3.2 billion program to help low-income families stay connected to the internet during the COVID-19 pandemic. The

BY KYLE POMERLEAU Last month, Senator Mitt Romney introduced a proposal to enact a “child allowance,” a monthly payment to households with children. His proposal would be financed in part by repealing other child benefits, including the “Child and Dependent Care Tax

Congressman Brian Higgins (NY-26) is pushing for federal grants for restaurants to be included in the first COVID emergency relief package approved by Congress under the new Biden Administration. In a letter to President-elect Biden, Higgins writes, “Restaurants are more than

New Yorkers Struggling to Pay Rent Due to Lost Income Caused by COVID-19 Are Eligible for One-Time Subsidies U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is urging New Yorkers to apply for rental relief through the New York State-administered COVID Rent Relief Program.

After seeing comments in social media by Department of Transportation Secretary Nominee Pete Buttigieg, Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh reached out this week to the former mayor of South Bend, In., about the Interstate 81 project. You can read the Mayor’s

BY BRENT ORELL Last week, the Department of Labor released the final employment report of the Trump administration, and the news there, much like all the news these days, was not good. For months, I’ve written that the key to getting the economy

BY E.J. McMAHON New York could be on the way to its first population decline in any decade since the 1970s, according to the latest estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. The Empire State’s July 1, 2020 population of 19,336,776 was down

BY ANGELA RACHIDI Congress responded to the arrival of the pandemic on US soil in spring 2020 by passing sweeping economic relief measures, including policies directed toward supporting the needs of families. The Families First Coronavirus Response Act guaranteed paid time off

BY EDWARD PINTO AND TOBIAS PETER Key takeaways: Purchase rate lock volume remains strongly above last year’s. For the last couple weeks, volume has consistently been about 30%-80% higher. Driven by ultra-low mortgage rates and a limited supply, national HPA

BY TOBIAS PETER The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed a distressing fact in the housing world: Federal home loan policies that promote risky lending in the name of providing “responsible, affordable mortgage credit access” for minority households are setting up minority

BY E.J. McMAHON Still struggling to recover from spring pandemic shutdowns, now facing the threat of renewed restrictions due to a second wave of COVID infections, the last thing New York’s economy needs is a state-mandated disincentive to put people back to

Sources close to Mayor Byron Brown tell The Chronicle that he is working to relocate the Greyhound Bus Station on North Division Street and to co-locate it at the City’s new Amtrak Station, which opened earlier this month on Exchange Street.  The

BY BRONWYN HOWELL Since the US and other governments have effectively banned the use of Chinese (read Huawei, but also ZTE) equipment from future mobile communications networks, support for open radio access network (O-RAN) architecture has risen dramatically. The Federal Communications Commission