Business news in brief

St. Louis' minimum wage rises to $10

ST. LOUIS -- St. Louis' minimum wage will rise to $10 per hour starting today, after action by a circuit judge.

Judge Steven Ohmer on Thursday lifted an injunction that previously blocked a 2015 ordinance from becoming law. St. Louis' minimum wage will rise again in January, to $11 per hour.

The city said it is mailing notices to employers. Those who refuse to pay workers the new minimum could face criminal prosecution and loss of their business license and occupancy permit.

St. Louis joins about 40 other cities that have raised their minimum wage, including Seattle, Los Angeles and Chicago. It doesn't go as high as the $15 wage being phased in for some places, but it is significantly higher than Missouri's $7.70 minimum.

-- The Associated Press

Delta proposes cancellation solutions

ATLANTA -- Delta Air Lines mapped out a series of fixes to alleviate mass cancellations like those that plagued the carrier after an early April thunderstorm and disrupted travel plans of hundreds of thousands of people.

In a memo to employees this week, Delta Chief Executive Officer Ed Bastian and Chief Operating Officer Gil West wrote that an internal task force has been analyzing why the recovery "fell short."

"We know some [employees] are still taking care of customers who were impacted by the storm. Thanks for pulling Delta out of the ditch," they wrote.

The airline is being sued by one of its most loyal customers because he was accidentally promised a $6,000 refund.

A big cause of the meltdown was strain on Delta's crew scheduling and crew tracking system, which left planes without pilots and flight attendants across the country and exacerbated flight cancellations for days.

The Delta meltdown came near the end of a busy spring break travel period, disrupting the trips of thousands of families with young children in tow and leaving them stranded in airports or in cities away from home.

-- The Associated Press

Average mortgage rate slips to 4.02%

WASHINGTON -- Long-term U.S. mortgage rates barely moved this week after rising last week for the first time in five weeks. The benchmark 30-year rate remained above the key threshold of 4 percent.

Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday the average rate on 30-year fixed-rate home loans ticked down to 4.02 percent from 4.03 percent last week. The rate stood at 3.66 percent a year ago and averaged 3.65 percent in 2016, the lowest level in records dating to 1971.

The rate on 15-year mortgages was unchanged from last week at 3.27 percent.

Despite the low borrowing rates that could lure prospective homebuyers, the housing market has remained hampered by limited supply, rising home prices and tight mortgage credit. The bad news for buyers is that the number of houses for sale has dropped to its lowest level in nearly 20 years.

To calculate average mortgage rates, Freddie Mac, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., surveys lenders across the country between Monday and Wednesday each week. The average doesn't include extra fees, known as points, which most borrowers must pay to get the lowest rates. One point equals 1 percent of the loan amount.

The average fee for a 30-year mortgage was unchanged this week at 0.5 point. The fee on 15-year loans rose to 0.5 point from 0.4 point.

-- The Associated Press

Apple to spend $1B on U.S. engineering

CUPERTINO, Calif. -- Apple Inc. said it intends to bolster the U.S. manufacturing sector by creating a $1 billion "advanced manufacturing fund" -- with some of that initial money going toward a company the tech giant is prepared to partner with, according to chief executive Tim Cook.

The announcement, made by Cook on CNBC on Wednesday, comes after months of focus by President Donald Trump on jobs, manufacturing and the global economy. Cook did not appear to suggest that his company's decision was influenced by Trump. But the president has showered praise on companies such as Carrier, Softbank and Charter Communications for promising to hire more American workers -- even if some of those pledges predated Trump's tenure.

Unlike those firms, Apple's announcement was not a hiring promise; the company simply said that it was hoping to promote U.S. manufacturing with its new fund.

"We've talked to a company we're going to invest in already," Cook said.

Cook has spoken previously about the shortage of U.S. workers who can perform advanced manufacturing. Advanced manufacturing differs from typical manufacturing in that it often requires specialized skills to produce highly engineered components that go into Apple's products.

-- The Washington Post

Majority of homes now cellphone-only

NEW YORK -- According to a U.S. government study released Thursday, 50.8 percent of homes and apartments had only cellphone service in the latter half of 2016, the first time such households attained a majority in the survey. Another 45.9 percent of homes and apartments maintain landline phones. The remaining households have no phone service at all.

More than 39 percent of U.S. households have both landline and cellphone service.

Renters and younger adults are more likely to have just a cellphone, which researchers attribute to their mobility and comfort with newer technologies.

The in-person survey of 19,956 households was part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Health Interview Survey, which tracks landline use in order to assure representative samples in ongoing health studies. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 1 percentage point.

Cellphone-only homes have other commonalities.

"Wireless-only adults are more likely to drink heavily, more likely to smoke and be uninsured," even after factoring for age and income, said Stephen Blumberg, the study's co-author and a landline user. "There certainly is something about giving up a landline that appeals to the same people who may engage in risky behavior."

-- The Associated Press

Business on 05/05/2017

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