April saw the worst monthly decline in U.S. retail sales on record, reflecting the impact of the coronavirus pandemic as shelter-in-place orders spread throughout the country and consumers pulled back on spending. Retail sales dove 16.4% in April compared with March, according to a Friday report by the Census Bureau. April numbers nearly doubled the 8.3% monthly drop from February to March and marked the worst monthly setback recorded for the industry since the agency started tracking sales...

Retail, tech and insurance companies are among those hit in the latest wave of layoffs and furloughs impacting the Bay Area. The RealReal, a San Francisco company that sells secondhand luxury apparel and goods online, is laying off 10% of its staff, or 235 employees. VSCO, one of Oakland’s most prominent tech startups, laid off 45 employees — about 30% of its workers. Others making cuts include big box retailer Best Buy and San Francisco’s Newfront Insurance. GoPro of San Mateo said Wednesday...

Clothing retailers Gap, Macy’s and Kohl’s announced Monday that most of their employees would be furloughed, affecting hundreds of thousands of mostly store workers nationwide. Gap, which is headquartered in San Francisco, said Monday it would furlough the majority of its 80,000 retail workers. Macy’s, which has already closed many stores around the country, said a majority of its 125,000 workers would be furloughed, including 5,000 who work at 20 Bay Area stores. Kohl’s will furlough about...

A month ago, the Bay Area was booming. Now, layoffs are mounting at a speed that is catching business owners and employees off guard. Truckers, cashiers, stagehands, airline workers, party suppliers and countless others are bearing the terrible economic cost of the coronavirus pandemic. And there’s no end in sight. Some companies are implementing hiring freezes or cutting contractor hours in the hopes the storm will pass and they will be able to hold on to employees once business returns to...

San Francisco voters will decide whether to tax landlords of empty retail spaces. Proposition D on Tuesday’s ballot proposes a levy on storefronts that stand vacant for more than six months. Supporters say it would motivate landlords to find tenants. It would put San Francisco at the forefront of the move to address the growing number of retail vacancies nationwide, making it the first major city to explicitly tax empty stores. Supervisor Aaron Peskin, the sponsor of the measure, has argued...