More jobless Americans are suing states for ending federal unemployment benefits early

Out-of-work Americans in Indiana, Texas and Maryland have filed lawsuits against their respective states seeking to reinstate a pandemic relief program that paid out an extra $300 a week in unemployment benefits.

The three states are among the 26 states – nearly all of which are led by Republican governors – that decided last month to prematurely end one of three federal unemployment programs that provided out-of-work Americans with an extra $300 a week, on top of their regular state benefits, and extended eligibility for contract workers as well as those who had exhausted their regular state benefits. READ MORE

FTC charges Broadcom with monopolizing chip industry

The Federal Trade Commission said Friday it has sued and settled with the technology giant Broadcom over allegations that the company sought to monopolize the supply of semiconductor chips.

According to the complaint, Broadcom (AVGO) entered into exclusive anti-competitive deals with its business customers — including television and internet service providers such as Charter, Comcast and Verizon — that forbade them from purchasing chips from other vendors. (The ISPs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.) Broadcom also allegedly sought to link sales of its chips with other related products such as WiFi and signal converter chips, requiring customers to purchase both. READ MORE

Ford idling 8 factories for weeks in July and August due to semiconductor shortage

Ford is suspending production at eight North American factories for various periods of time in July and August due to the ongoing semiconductor shortage, including one that builds its best-selling F-150 pickup.

"While we continue to manufacture new vehicles, we're prioritizing completing our customers' vehicles that were assembled without certain parts due to the industry-wide semiconductor shortage," the automaker said in a statement provided to Reuters. READ MORE

Whose rocket is bigger? How Musk, Branson and Bezos’ space stuff stacks up

After Jeff Bezos announced that he would fly into suborbit with his brother, the winner of an auctioned seat and another crew member on July 20, Richard Branson countered with a flight plan of his own for early July. 

Both billionaires are jumping into the space tourism market, having invested in the space industry for about two decades.  READ MORE

Flying car completes test flight between airports

The hybrid car-aircraft, AirCar, is equipped with a BMW engine and runs on regular petrol-pump fuel.

Its creator, Prof Stefan Klein, said it could fly about 1,000km (600 miles), at a height of 8,200ft (2,500m), and had clocked up 40 hours in the air so far.

It takes two minutes and 15 seconds to transform from car into aircraft. READ MORE

What America's Startup Boom Could Mean For The Economy

Back in November, the Planet Money newsletter reported that — despite a deadly pandemic and an ugly recession — America was seeing a boom in the creation of new startups. We spoke with University of Maryland economist John Haltiwanger, one of the leading scholars of business formation. Now Haltiwanger has a new study out, and the trend is clear: "The surge continues," Haltiwanger says. "We're now convinced this wasn't just a blip." READ MORE

A credit card giant says no one should work from the office five days a week

Some companies can't wait to get to get their employees back to the office full-time. Synchrony Financial is not one of them.

Synchrony (SYF), America's largest store credit card company, is not allowing employees to return to the office five days a week even as the pandemic winds down. READ MORE

What the Modern Buyer Wants in 2021

B2B tech sales in 2021 has seen some big changes. The biggest by far? The emergence of buyers in the sales process. 

The days of tech sales teams controlling the entry points to the sales funnel are over. The days of sales teams leading potential customers through their own process regardless of customer desires are over.  READ MORE

Millions of jobs and a shortage of applicants. Welcome to the new economy

There's a problem at James Hook's chicken farms, and it has nothing to do with poultry.

P.D. Hook, a hatchery that supplies one third of the chickens sold in the United Kingdom, should be humming along as the economy roars back to life. But the company is short about 40 farm workers, double the usual number of vacancies. READ MORE

Wall Street dealmakers have never been busier

There's never been a better time for companies to raise funding from hot markets or make moves to scoop up their competitors.

That's been a huge boon to investment bankers, who are gearing up for another summer of juggling dealmaking with vacations. READ MORE

This Wall Street bank is bucking the back to office trend

The era of virtual work isn't ending at UBS.

The Swiss bank will allow up to two-thirds of its employees around the world to permanently adopt a hybrid schedule that includes a mix of working from home and from the office, a person familiar with the matter told CNN Business. READ MORE

Fired by Bot at Amazon: ‘It’s You Against the Machine’

Stephen Normandin spent almost four years racing around Phoenix delivering packages as a contract driver for Amazon.com Inc. Then one day, he received an automated email. The algorithms tracking him had decided he wasn’t doing his job properly. The 63-year-old Army veteran was stunned. He’d been fired by a machine. READ MORE

Requiring employees to return to the office? Get ready for them to quit

Employers considering bringing their employees back into the office might want to reconsider.

A whopping 58% of workers say they would “absolutely” look for a new job if they weren’t allowed to continue working remotely in their current position, new data finds. According to FlexJobs, which surveyed more than 2,100 people who have been working remotely during the pandemic, 31% aren’t sure what they would do and only 11% say not being able to continue working remotely is not a big deal to them. READ MORE

Morgan Stanley to bar unvaccinated employees, clients from NY offices - Source

Morgan Stanley's staff and clients will not be allowed to enter the bank's New York offices if they are not fully vaccinated, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Employees, clients, and visitors will be required to attest to being fully vaccinated in order to access the bank's offices in New York and Westchester, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters late Tuesday. READ MORE

This is when the labor shortage will end

The economy would be booming, if only businesses could find all the workers they need. Employers report 9.3 million unfilled jobs, the most on record. But millions of workers remain on the sidelines, holding back growth and delaying the return to a normal, pre-pandemic economy.

Republicans argue that generous jobless benefits are more appealing than a paycheck, and 25 states with Republican governors have cut off those payments ahead of schedule. But this argument is overblown and there are other important reasons some workers are hesitant to return. Understanding the factors slowing the return of jobs and workers helps determine when the mismatch is likely to end, and what comes next. READ MORE

Here are the companies rushing workers back to the office — and the ones that aren't

It's been 15 long months since millions of workers left their offices and set up makeshift desks at home.

But as Covid-19 cases decline and more Americans get vaccinated, companies are beginning to establish protocols about how, and whether, office life will resume. READ MORE

A Real Estate Mogul Has a $100 Million Plan to Save the Internet

Frank McCourt, the billionaire real estate mogul and former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, is pouring $100 million into an attempt to rebuild the foundations of social media. The effort, which he has loftily named Project Liberty, centers on the construction of a publicly accessible database of people’s social connections, allowing users to move records of their relationships between social media services instead of being locked into a few dominant apps. READ MORE

Your Tech Company Needs 'Startup IQ'

In the first season of the TV series Halt and Catch Fire, the young, rebellious developer Cameron has impressed with her coding abilities, but she is tired of her rigid superior and wants to prove she can lead the entire software team more efficiently: faster delivery, half the cost. She installs the text-based adventure cult game Colossal Cave Adventure on her colleagues' computers and organizes an old-fashioned LAN party for the developer team. The next day, she gathers the team and asks who completed the game by breaking the code. Some raise their hands. She nods and says that the developers who cheated can stay. The rest can leave. READ MORE

What Garry Tan Has Learned About Startups After Founding 2 Companies--and Advising More Than 700

Startup investors make their names by identifying the potential for wild growth. Garry Tan also has the ability to spot the precise way a company is likely to die.

Tan is known for his investments in Coinbase and Instacart--and before co-founding and managing his early-stage venture capital fund, Initialized Capital, he was a partner at Y Combinator, where he advised more than 700 startups. READ MORE

Uber to become the sole owner of grocery delivery startup Cornershop

Uber has reached a deal to become the sole owner of Latin American delivery startup Cornershop, just one year after acquiring a majority stake in the company. The ride-hailing giant said in a regulatory filing Monday that it will purchase the remaining 47% interest in Cornershop in exchange for 29 million shares. The transaction is expected to close in July.

Uber announced in 2019 plans to take a majority ownership in Cornershop. That transaction wasn’t completed until the third quarter of 2020 other than in Mexico, which closed in January 2021. This latest agreement, which was reached June 18 and reported Monday, will make Cornershop a wholly owned subsidiary of Uber. The deal is a logical next-step in the Uber-Cornershop relationship, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. READ MORE