Britain’s retailers predict that 900,000 jobs in the sector — a third of today’s total — will disappear by 2025 as technology and the rising minimum wage reshape the industry. Retailers currently employ one in six British workers — about 3m people — and the sector accounts for a tenth of the economy. Source: FT
- A movement supporting reparations as a way to make amends for the atrocities of slavery and to reduce the persistent wealth gap is gaining momentum.
- One hundred and forty-two members of Congress support H.R. 40, the bill to study reparations.
- William Darity, professor of public policy at Duke University, estimates a concrete program could cost the U.S. government between $10 trillion and $12 trillion. Source CNBC
The House passed President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan early Saturday in a nearly party-line vote, advancing a sweeping pandemic aid package that would provide billions of dollars for unemployed Americans, struggling families and businesses, schools and the distribution of coronavirus vaccines. Source MSN
Exxon Mobil erased almost every drop of oil-sands crude from its books in a sweeping revision of worldwide reserves to depths never before seen in the company’s modern history.
Exxon counted the equivalent of 15.2 billion barrels of reserves as of Dec. 31, down from 22.44 billion a year earlier, according to a regulatory filing on Wednesday. The company’s reserves of the dense, heavy crude extracted from Western Canada’s sandy bogs dropped by 98%. Source World OIl