A Beloved Grocery Chain Now Makes Painful Closures in Mass.

A beloved grocery chain now makes painful closures in Mass., affecting a total of eight locations, leaving shoppers mourning the loss.

Customers say the closures of Stop & Shop stores will leave them with few alternatives for where to shop.

A total of eight Stop & Shop stores in Massachusetts are due to close before the end of the year.

These are part of the total 32 locations that have been forced to shut down across the Northeast.

It was announced in May that underperforming stores will close by November 2.

“Everyone’s at Aldi,” one Facebook user wrote.

Stores in Worcester, Massachusetts – less than an hour’s drive from Boston – have been a key shopping destination for residents.

People have expressed worries about the impact these planned closures may have on residents in the community.

“Residents are concerned,” said Jennifer Pacillo, a District City Councilor.

She acknowledged that there is an Aldi residents can go to instead, but stressed that “it is not a full-service grocery store… people deserve access to healthy free foods.”

“Like many others, I was caught off guard by the news that Stop & Shop would be closing its doors for good,” said Alex Corrales, a Housing Authority CEO in Worcester.

Councilors and residents in the area are hoping that Stop & Shop’s decision to close their stores is not final.

“I certainly do understand that we can’t control sometimes what these corporations do, but I do think it’s worth talking to Stop & Shop,” said Candy Mero-Carlson, another District City Councilor in Worcester.

The grocery store has been described as an employer for the city.

The Stop & Shop chain is operated by Ahold Delhaize, a multinational food retail group.

The CEO of the group, JJ Fleeman, said Stop & Shop is making “difficult decisions to close underperforming stores to create a healthy story base for the long term.”

According to him, the chain “is not where we want to be or need to be”.

The grocery store has remodeled almost half of its close-to 400 stores since 2018, but this does not appear to have done enough to prevent store closures, per The Sun.

As well as Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island are also facing Stop & Shop closures this year.

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Applications for unemployment benefits now surge to new highs, a sign that the white-hot labor market is starting to cool off.

First-time applications for unemployment benefits rose last week to 231,000, the highest level since August, per CNN.

Thursday’s data also showed that the number of continuing claims, or applications from people who have filed for unemployment for at least one week, was 1.78 million.

That’s an increase of 17,000 from the prior week, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The latest numbers come less than a week after the monthly jobs report showed the US economy added just 175,000 positions in April, less than economists expected and a steep drop-off from prior months.

US employers have now added an average of 245,500 jobs per month, versus 2023’s 251,000-per-month average.

Still, hiring remains strong. Although the unemployment rate ticked up to 3.9% last month, it’s the 27th consecutive month that the jobless rate has held under 4%, matching a streak last seen in the late 1960s.

Weekly jobless claims data tends to be volatile but, while one week’s worth of data “does not a trend make,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at Fwdbonds.

“We can no longer be sure that calm seas lie ahead for the US economy if today’s weekly jobless claims are any indication.”

“Company layoffs are picking up, hinting at caution on the part of companies as they weigh the outlook for the second half of the year,” he wrote in a note Thursday.

The Federal Reserve has been battling inflation by raising its key lending rate in the hopes of slowing the economy.

While the labor market has so far resisted those efforts, remaining white hot for the past 18 months despite 11 rate hikes from the central bank, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said last week that demand has “cooled from its extremely high level of a couple of years ago.”

Ian Shepherdson at Pantheon Economics said in a note Thursday: “We’d need to see at least a month of elevated readings to convince us that the trend really has turned.”

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Also Read: A Giant Company Now Announces Unexpected Layoffs in Virginia

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