Business Highlights

October sales offer relief to merchants

NEW YORK (AP) — Stores are heading into the period with slashed inventories, determined not to have the fire sales that characterized last Christmas. But shoppers are still facing tight credit and a weak job market and might wait for fat discounts or not buy at all. That game of chicken will determine the holiday winners and losers.

Sales at stores open at least a year rose 2.1 percent in October, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers-Goldman Sachs tally, compared with a 4.2 percent drop in October 2008. The October results beat estimates for a 1 percent gain and followed a surprising 0.6 percent increase in September.

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Productivity gains may be bad news for job seekers

WASHINGTON (AP) — Companies across the economy are finding ways to do more with fewer workers, dimming hopes that hiring will take off anytime soon.

Employers became leaner and more efficient in the third quarter. Wages, meantime, remain flat or falling. The result is that productivity — output per hour of work — jumped at the fastest pace in six years.