NEW YORK - Santa’s on a budget this year. Toy retailers and makers plan to make the best of it by offering more deals and cut-price versions of more expensive toys that they hope will spur parents to spend even if they’re scrimping elsewhere. Two influential lists of expected hot holiday [ Read More → ]

The unemployment rate in the euro zone hit 9.6% in August - the highest in over a decade after the number of jobless rose by 165,000 during the month, bringing the total jobless number using the single currency bloc to 15.17 million. The 10-year high comes despite the fact that many [ Read More → ]

Walter Hamilton And E. Scott Reckard - Kenneth D. Lewis, who became a focus of public and political outrage while presiding over Bank of America Corp.’s stunning fall from grace in the financial crisis, is stepping down as [ Read More → ]

Winter’s coming, but breathe easy. While the average cost of heating oil in the Northeast is expected to rise to $2.73 a gallon this season, that’s only 7 cents higher than last winter - and nowhere near what it was in the summer of 2008, when a [ Read More → ]

HAVERHILL - On the once-contaminated site of a decaying shoe factory, a thriving neighborhood is growing with the opening of hundreds of chic apartments, part of a renaissance in this Merrimack River mill city, which has seen plenty of hard times. Longtime residents like Richard Lynch never believed the crumbling [ Read More → ]

FRIEND TURNED BOSS: You have lunch together every day, grab an occasional drink after work, and have gotten each other through work-related crises. So wouldn’t it be strange if your office buddy became your new boss? It’s more likely to happen in the current economic environment as hiring freezes force companies [ Read More → ]

The Boston-area housekeepers who were fired by Hyatt Hotels Corp. sent a clear message yesterday about the company’s offer to put them in new jobs at a staffing agency: They don’t plan to accept it. The housekeepers chanted “No way, Hyatt,’’ at a press conference yesterday afternoon after 77 of the [ Read More → ]

WASHINGTON - The recession has hit middle-income and poor families hardest, widening the economic gap between the richest and poorest Americans as rippling job layoffs ravaged household budgets. The wealthiest 10 percent of Americans , those making more than $138,000 each year , earned 11.4 times the roughly $12,000 made by [ Read More → ]

The percentage of households receiving food stamps in Philadelphia increased by nearly 3 percentage points between 2007 and 2008 - the period of time marking the start of the recession - according to figures released yesterday by the U.S. Census Bureau. And that number is only expected to rise, according to [ Read More → ]

WASHINGTON - Big job losses and a spike in early retirement claims from laid-off seniors will force Social Security to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes the next two years, the first time that’s happened since the 1980s. The deficits , $10 billion in 2010 and $9 [ Read More → ]