Retailers press for passage of a bill to enact rounding standards as cash-handling businesses grapple with the cent’s gradual demise. Businesses would gain new guidelines for rounding transactions if the government gradually phases out the U.S. penny under legislation Congress is considering. The Common Cents Act, which passed the House of Representatives on Tuesday, enacts formal guidelines for businesses to round tabs to the nearest 5 cents as the U.S. gradually retires the penny. “We need a clear standard from Congress allowing businesses to round cash transaction amounts and a safe harbor from liability in doing so fairly,” wrote the groups, which included the National Restaurant Association and the National Association of Convenience Stores.

Amazon’s robotic automation efforts may wind up in the company cutting its human U.S. workforce roughly in half. An internal corporate memo initially obtained by the New York Times indicates Amazon thinks the increasing usage of robots could enable to it replace more than 500,000 U.S. human employees and avoid having to bring on another 160,000 workers by 2027, according to the New York Daily News. The memo also reportedly states Amazon believes referring to its robots as “cobots” (short for “collaborative robots”) may make transitioning to more robotic operations more publicly acceptable. The compny employs roughly 1.2 million workers in the U.S. The memo reportedly says Amazon’s ultimate goal is automating 75% of its corporate operations using robots. However, Amazon strongly disputed the notion that it seeks any widescale reduction in human employees by using robots in an official statement to the New York Daily News.

Amazon — a company that made more than $35 billion in profit in the first half of 2025 and is on track to spend more than $120 billion on AI this year — is laying off thousands of people, citing its desire to slim down and “operate like the world’s largest startup.” The overall message from Amazon reflected a familiar impulse in Corporate America to reduce headcount in the face of rising prices, an unpredictable trade war and a potential (though still largely speculative) artificial-intelligence revolution. Amazon isn’t alone: UPS on Tuesday announced it had cut some 48,000 workers this year; Target eliminated 1,800 corporate jobs last week “to be stronger, faster and better positioned” for the future, its new CEO said; and other spectacularly profitable tech players like Microsoft and Meta have also shed staff by the thousands recently. But the impulse, which tends to please Wall Street in the short term, also amounts to a giant gamble on a technology that has yet to prove it can deliver the efficiencies its backers have long promised.