The Wall Street Journal reports that Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. is among the companies benefiting from the auto industry's recovery from a slump triggered by COVID-19 lockdowns.
"Makers of rearview mirrors, steel and air bags detailed increased business because of auto makers looking to make up for production lost" during the spring, the Journal says.
Another factor that's helping the auto business: "Buyers have been returning to showrooms faster than expected as customers see a need for personal vehicles," according to the article.
The industry now is catching up to address the short-supply situation, which is helping Cleveland-based Cliffs, a mining company that has gotten into the steel business in a big way with the acquisition of AK Steel and plans to buy the U.S. operations of ArcelorMittal.
Cliffs' flat-rolled steel shipments rose 80% to 1.1 million tons for the third quarter, an increase driven by the auto market, said Lourenco Goncalves, chairman, president and chief executive of the steel-and-mining company. Its sales nearly tripled to $1.65 billion, more than 70% of which came from the auto market, Goncalves said on Friday, Oct. 23, according to the Journal.
The paper notes that Goncalves attributed the market's strength to the need for personal vehicles as city dwellers have flocked to the suburbs during the pandemic.
"The recovery in car sales is consumer-driven and shows no signs to end any time soon," he said.
• Both the University of Akron and Ohio Wesleyan University are mentioned in this New York Times article about colleges slashing budgets in the pandemic, with virtually no field off limits. "Liberal arts departments, graduate student aid and even tenured teaching positions are targets as the coronavirus causes shortfalls," the Times says. One example the Times points to is the University of Akron, which, citing the coronavirus, "successfully invoked a clause in its collective-bargaining agreement in September to supersede tenure rules and lay off 97 unionized faculty members." Ohio Wesleyan, in Delaware, Ohio, near Columbus, is eliminating 18 majors, in areas including comparative literature, urban studies and journalism. The Times reports that Ohio Wesleyan's president, Rock Jones, told students in a recent email that the moves would merge religion and philosophy into one department and lump Black studies and women's studies into a single "critical identity studies" program, but also will save about $4 million and limit faculty layoffs to one tenured post.
• A time change is coming up, and it's likely to be trickier when working from home, according to this Wall Street Journal article, which includes a comment from a Cleveland Clinic sleep specialist. Here's the premise of the piece: The first clock shift since the pandemic's arrival in earnest in the U.S. is coming at 2 a.m. Nov. 1 — and for those no longer working in offices, the effects could be more intense than usual. For some people, the switch can upend a hard-won rhythm of working from home, focusing and staying emotionally balanced — but the shift also can make for a powerful tool for getting through the dark days of winter if handled correctly, scientists say. Even in normal circumstances, the time shift can be difficult. ... This year, those working from home may suffer from the clock shift much more than when they were working in offices, says Michael J. McCarthy, an associate professor in the University of California San Diego's psychiatry department. Then, the stimulation of being with colleagues and commuting — whether stuck in rush-hour jams or not — provided distraction from the dwindling afternoon daylight hours affected by the clock shifts. To help, Harneet Walia, sleep specialist with the Cleveland Clinic's Sleep Disorders Center, recommends grabbing the extra morning sunlight: Early sunlight is a very important body-clock cue, Walia says, and it "can be gotten on a stoop or porch or in a backyard or park, for 20 to 30 minutes."
• If you like things spooky, Ohio is a great place to live. In this piece, Forbes looks at numbers from SlotSource.com and Ghosts of America to rank the states "that are home to the scariest hauntings and most phantasmagoric happenings in the country." Texas was named the most haunted state in America, as "its residents have witnessed a whopping 6,845 paranormal activities since 2005," Forbes says. California was second, with 6,444 reports, and Ohio was third, with 2,555 sightings. Forbes highlights the spookiest places in the top 10 states, and for Ohio that includes the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, which hosts regular ghost hunts and was the setting for "The Shawshank Redemption." The state's most haunted hotel? "Newbury's Punderson Manor used to be an estate in the 19th century and later became a girls camp," Forbes says. "These days, the hotel looks welcoming enough with its Tudor mansion and hillside cabins. But it's so haunted that psychic mediums and paranormal investigators often visit to check out the otherworldly happenings."
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Cleveland-Cliffs gets a boost from the rebound in the auto business - Crain's Cleveland Business
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