Denver teachers ended a 3-day walkout after their union and the city’s public school system reached a tentative agreement on Thursday to add $23 million in new money to fund a 7%-11% increase in base salaries next year and a 20-step salary hike schedule.
Why it matters: This is yet another significant victory for teachers amid a growing national movement by educators across the country over the past year, which has highlighted inadequate teacher pay, school underfunding and lack of resources. Just last month, Los Angeles teachers representing the country's second largest school district halted a 6-day strike after reaching a tentative deal that included a 6% raise, promises of smaller class sizes and additional nurses and counselors.
Levi Strauss & Co., the San Francisco-based jeans-maker, filed for a $100 million IPO. Expect that number to be a placeholder, with the WSJ reporting that Levi's plans to raise over $600 million at a valuation north of $3 billion.
Why it matters: After 145 years, it remains by far the most popular seller of denim pants, with a market share that's three times as large as its closest rival.
U.S. retail sales dropped 1.2% in December from the previous month, the biggest monthly drop since 2009 and a surprise for economists who were expecting sales to rise by 0.1%, the Commerce Department said on Thursday.
The big picture: The report, delayed several weeks because of the government shutdown, shows a pullback in spending from consumers. It raises concerns about what this could mean for the data on 4th quarter GDP growth, which was also delayed by the shutdown.
BENTONVILLE, Ark. — In the 1980s, Walmart was the archvillain of capitalism: the ruthless killer of main streets and mom-and-pops, outrageously profitable and, by all appearances, unstoppable. Now, the 57-year-old retailer has a new role in American society: the anti-Amazon.
What's happening: Amid a decade-long era of heady corporate profits, vast numbers of workers feel untethered, distrustful and without a sense of belonging and dignity. Amazon, like the rest of Big Tech, is being swept up in this crisis of faith, villainized for its very bigness.
Fashion mogul Levi Strauss filed for an initial public offering Tuesday, re-emerging as a public company since 1985, CNBC reports.
Details: In the San Francisco-based company's SEC filing, Levi plans to raise $100 million through the IPO. However, previous reports said the company could raise between $600 million and $800 million at a valuation of around $5 billion.
Nearly half of fund managers surveyed by Bank of America Merrill Lynch expect global GDP to fall in 2019 and 55% say they're bearish on both the world's growth and inflation outlook next year.
Why it matters: That's causing many to increase their cash positions, cut back on allocation to stocks and strangely to increase their holdings of emerging market assets.
After predicting eye-popping 11% first quarter profit growth for S&P 500 companies last year, analysts have massively scaled back expectations to the tune of roughly $16 billion in profits. They are now predicting the first year-over-year decline in 3 years.
Why it matters: Those lofty expectations had been set as recently as March and have come down drastically since, with some now predicting an "earnings recession" — negative earnings growth in the first two quarters of the year.
On the 1st anniversary of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., 200 student journalists from across the country assembled to document and write profiles on the 1,200 Americans under the age of 18 killed in shootings in the last year.
"The reporting you will read in 'Since Parkland' is journalism in one of its purest forms — revealing the human stories behind the statistics — carried out on an exhaustive scale."
— The project's website
The newly launched multimedia initiative, titledSince Parkland, partnered with organizations that include The Trace, the Gun Violence Archive, Miami Herald, McClatchy, NowThis and Global Student Square. The victims whose stories are told were killed during school shootings, armed domestic violence, drug homicides, unintentional discharges, and stray bullets.
A new Prudential survey of more than 350 federal employees and contractors who went unpaid during the 35-day government shutdown found that many cash-strapped workers were forced to take out loans, use up some or all of their emergency savings, and cut back on medical expenses.
