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Unions, Black Community Rallies to Save Ralphs Jobs Details JOBS POLITICS--Faced with the closing of five stores in the Los Angeles area, including South Los Angeles in predominantly Black neighborhoods and two in Long Beach, unions, community groups, seniors and shoppers rallied April 3 at the Slauson Avenue Ralphs grocery store. Kroger, the parent company of Ralphs, Food 4 Less and other stories around the country, took this drastic step in reaction to the mandated $5 hour hazard pay increase by the Los Angeles City Council ($4 increase in cities elsewhere).  Mo...

Homebuyers, renovators battle ‘unprecedented’ lumber costs Lumber, pictured here in the yard of Dillman & Upton in Rochester, has seen costs skyrocket across the country over the past year. Photo by Deb Jacques Now, the latest product to become scarce amid COVID-19 is lumber. Lumber costs are at an all-time high, spiking over 180% since last April, according to Random Lengths — which provides reports of market activity, prices and other analyses for the wood products industry. But what’s causing the surge? At the start of the pandemic, state-mandated lockdowns closed sawmills acros...

Many of the shortages linked to the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic are now a memory. You might not find your favorite brand of toilet paper on a given visit to the store, but chances are good that you will find toilet paper, and paper towels, too. But some of the patterns of 2020 — especially those apparent during the active warm-weather months — seem destined to repeat themselves as we look ahead to another summer shaped in part by restrictions and increased demand. Here is an incomplete but hopefully representative look at a few household-focused items that were hard to come ...

Homebuilders are turning away customers — for custom-built homes at least — because of uncertainty surrounding soaring lumber prices. "We have been hammered by lumber prices," said Jim Schuff, co-owner of Vesta Homes in Moore and president of the Oklahoma Home Builders Association. "How do you even begin to price a project that will take six months or more to complete?" He said even some speculative builders — those who build houses to sell with no buyers already under contract — are skittish about starting anything.

Record High Lumber Prices Still Hindering Home Building The problems that plagued the home building industry in 2020 seem to have followed it into the new year. ablokhin/Getty Images After normalizing slightly at the end of 2020, lumber prices steadily climbed back up throughout the first weeks of 2021 and hit record highs in early February. This on-going surge in the cost of lumber and other construction materials has become a major issue for contractors and home buyers, complicating home building across the U.S. and harming housing affordability at a time of historic demand. “According t...