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Los Angeles became the latest to join the movement when the city council approved a law on Sept. 24 requiring large hotels to pay employees at least $15.37 per hour and provide generous paid sick-leave benefits. But the ordinance includes a provision, increasingly common in similar ordinances, that permits unions to waive the requirements in collective bargaining.

. . . In 2013 the Long Beach Business Journal cited the collective-bargaining waiver built into the city’s $13 minimum wage law as an important factor in the unionization of two large hotels, the Hyatt Regency Long Beach and the Hyatt Pike Long Beach.

A drive to raise Los Angeles’s minimum wage to nearly twice the federal level would turn the country’s second-largest city into a prime test for whether high pay requirements help lift workers out of poverty or increase joblessness and blunt economic growth.

Crumbling and congested U.S. roadways are driving up costs for U.S. manufacturers as late deliveries and unreliable transportation undermine hard-fought gains in production efficiency, according to U.S. manufacturing executives.

U.S. job growth slowed to its lowest level of the year in August, a stumble for labor markets that had delivered a string of steady gains over the prior six months despite uneven economic growth. . . Revisions to earlier estimates for June and July showed that the economy added 28,000 fewer jobs than initially reported.

Across the U.S., small-business lending has been stuck in a slow, grinding recovery behind most other types of business and consumer loans. At the end of the first quarter, banks held $585 billion in loans to small businesses, up 1% from last September but still 18% less than the peak of $711 billion in 2008, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Hiring by U.S. employers remained robust in July, if a bit slower than previous months, with a broad-based rise in payrolls extending a half-year streak of strong employment gains. . . The unemployment rate, obtained via a separate survey of households, ticked up to a seasonally adjusted 6.2% in July from 6.1% in June. The rise in part reflects an increase in the number of people looking for jobs, some of whom are now being counted as unemployed. The labor-force participation rate ticked up slightly in July, to 62.9% from 62.8% in June, though it remained near its lowest level since the late 1970s.

Traders said there was no single catalyst for the stumble, though selling started early and accelerated into Thursday’s closing bell, dragging the Dow into negative territory, down 0.1%, for 2014.

In a vote that could highlight the difficulty in implementing additional measures to reduce carbon emissions ahead of global climate talks next year in Paris, Australia’s Senate on Thursday voted 39-32 to repeal a politically divisive carbon emissions price that contributed to the fall from power of three Australian leaders since it was first suggested in 2007.

Tesla Motors Inc. is taking a closer look at California to build a giant electric-car battery factory after state lawmakers proposed new tax breaks and regulatory changes that could speed its construction and lower costs.

U.S. employers added jobs at a robust clip in June and the unemployment rate fell, signs of labor-market strength as the economic recovery heads into its sixth year.

Nonfarm employment advanced at a seasonally adjusted 288,000 last month, the Labor Department said Thursday. The combined gains for the prior two months were revised up 29,000. April’s 304,000 increase was the strongest since January 2012.

The U.S. economy contracted in the first quarter of 2014, the latest stumble for a recovery that has struggled to find its footing since the recession ended almost five years ago.

Americans gained jobs at the fastest pace in more than two years last month and the jobless rate plunged, a sign the economy has rebounded from a winter rut.

U.S. nonfarm payrolls rose a seasonally adjusted 192,000 last month, the Labor Department said Friday. January and February payrolls were revised up by a combined 37,000. The nation’s unemployment rate held steady at 6.7% as more people found work and more people joined the labor force.

Gases and liquids pumped out of the ground, including ethane, can be processed into chemicals that are made into products ranging from plastics and antifreeze to cosmetics. New petrochemical projects are under way, with Dow Chemical, Sasol Ltd., Phillips 66 and other companies building 148 factories and plant expansions, thanks to the plentiful natural gas now available in the U.S., the American Chemistry Council said.

Job growth picked up in February as many employers shrugged off snowstorms and bitter cold across much of the U.S., suggesting resilience in the labor market that should allow the Federal Reserve to continue rolling back its bond-buying program.