The holidays are over but the airline travel problems are not. Over the past 24 hours, about 170 flights were canceled at Newark Airport. Across the U.S., as of midday, more than 2,300 flights were canceled and more than 2,700 were delayed. This is on top of the thousands of flights canceled over both the Christmas and the New Year’s weekends. As we’ve been reporting, airline staff shortages are to blame for the scheduling chaos and air traffic controllers have also been calling out sick. And now there’s an East Coast winter storm that’s complicated things further. Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst with Atmosphere Research Group, points out that staffing problems are happening even though airlines have made employee vaccinations a priority.
When asked when will things get back to normal, Harteveldt responded — that’s up to omicron.
Rising COVID-19 cases led some Walmart stores in New Jersey to temporarily close. A Walmart store in Manville closed Sunday for deep cleaning but is expected to open Tuesday. It’s the third store to recently close for a brief period of time.
Millions of families lost their pandemic-related assistance at the start of 2022. The expanded child care tax credit expired at the end of 2021, after Congress failed to renew the program. The child care tax-credit payments, which ranged from $250 to $300 a month, started going out last July, and the final payment was made in December. Under the expanded program, more families were eligible. Supporters of the expanded tax credit said the payment allowed families to pay for food or rent — keeping many out of poverty. Meanwhile, 2021 brought some big gains on Wall Street. The Dow Jones Industrial average gained 19% on the year, and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq had an even stronger performance.
