Elgin Area Chamber Of Commerce: Omicron Fears Overshadow Jobs Report, Walmart Uses Pop-Up Container Yards, Toys 'R' Us To Open Flags

Elgin IL

03 December, 2021

2:30 AM

Description

Press release from the Elgin Area Chamber of Commerce: December 02, 2021 By Richard Lawson CoStar News Omicron Concern Overshadows Jobs Report A strong jobs report that beat expectations Wednesday sent stocks higher for much of the morning. But the first reported case of the omicron coronavirus variant in the United States triggered a Wall Street tailspin that added to the previous day's losses. Payroll company ADP reported that private payrolls expanded by 534,000 in November, less than the previous month's 570,000. Wall Street had projected November's to be lower at 506,000. The service sector made up most of the increase with 424,000 jobs. Leisure and hospitality, hard hit last year with major job losses, led for another month with 136,000 jobs, the case for much of this year. Large company payrolls expanded by 277,000, better than small-size and medium-size companies combined. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up about 400 points during the morning. Reports on the first omicron case in California arrived around noon, however, and the Dow Jones slid during the afternoon to end the day 460 points lower, compounding the 650-dip on Tuesday. Retail and travel stocks were among the hardest hit. Nordstrom's and Kohl's each lost more than 5%.   Walmart Uses Pop-Up Container Yards Discount retailer Walmart has been using pop-up container yards to improve the flow of products to fill store shelves. Joe Metzger, Walmart's executive vice president for supply chain operations, wrote on LinkedIn recently that an empty lot near the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports has been processing 500 containers a day. "This popup operation has dramatically improved our flow of containers not only out of the port but back into our port terminals with empty containers," Metzger wrote. Walmart is doing the same in Savannah, Georgia, according to industry trade website American Shipper. Pop-up container yards at the Savannah port were part of President Biden's broader plan announced in early November to help deal with port congestion that included shifting ports to 24-hour operations. In a Monday roundtable with retailers, Doug McMillon, Walmart's CEO, told Biden the plan was helping ease congestion. At Southern California ports, which had the biggest bottleneck, Walmart has "seen a 51% improvement" in containers flowing through them," McMillion said, according to the White House. He said the retailer has more inventory now than it did for last year's holiday season, reiterating what he said when Walmart reported earnings recently. Toys 'R' Us To Open Flagship Store Under a new owner, Toys "R" Us is returning to brick-and-mortar retail after closing all stores four years ago in the wake of filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. WHP Global, which in March acquired a controlling stake in a resurrected Toys "R" Us brand, announced plans to open a two-level, 20,000-square-foot store in American Dream, the luxury entertainment complex in Bergen County, New Jersey. Don Ghermezian, American Dream's CEO, had hinted in September that the Toys "R" Us store was in the mix. Toy "R" Us revived under Tru Kids Inc. in January 2019, starting online. It opened a couple of stores but those ultimately closed. Macy's has been selling the toy brand since August. Yehuda Shmidman, CEO of WHP Global, said in a statement that "debuting our first Toys "R" Us flagship here is a no-brainer" because the brand now is in more than 900 stores and e-commerce sites across 25 countries. Source: www.CoStar.com This press release was produced by the Elgin Area Chamber of Commerce. The views expressed here are the author's own.