Marketplace

By Marketplace

Business

What's Marketplace about?

Marketplace® is the leading business news program in the nation. Host Kai Ryssdal and our team of reporters bring you clear explorations of how economic news affects you, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Airing each weekday evening on your local public radio station or on-demand anytime, Marketplace is your liaison between economics and life. Marketplace with Kai Ryssdal is part of the Marketplace portfolio of public radio programs broadcasting nationwide, which additionally includes Marketplace Morning Report®, Marketplace Weekend®, and Marketplace Tech®. Visit marketplace.org for more. From American Public Media. Twitter: @Marketplace

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How Prime (spending) Day sh...

06.21.2021

By the time you read this, there’s a chance someone you know has already mentioned Amazon’s Prime Day. Perhaps they even wished you a “happy” Prime Day. Amazon’s signature day of sales has transformed into its own kind of epic ...

Marketplace episodes:

06.21.2021 How Prime (spending) Day shines a light on quirks of the global supply chain By the time you read this, there’s a chance someone you know has already mentioned Amazon’s Prime Day. Perhaps they even wished you a “happy” Prime Day. Amazon’s signature day of sales has transformed into its own kind of epic ...
06.18.2021 The cost of hygiene theater We know now that it’s pretty rare for COVID-19 to spread through surfaces, and most Americans are at least partly vaccinated anyway, but that hasn’t stopped businesses from cleaning like they were last March. On today’s show, we’ll look at ...
06.17.2021 Consumers aren’t worried about inflation … yet Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said yesterday that the Fed is seeing some inflation — but it’s likely transitory inflation caused by, in part, the uneven reopening of the economy. But if you’ve been tuned in to the news lately, ...
06.16.2021 The psychological toll of long-term unemployment We’ve spent every month since the start of this pandemic picking apart jobs numbers and unemployment claims. But there’s a lot happening in the labor force that isn’t captured in that data — like the toll long-term unemployment can take ...
06.15.2021 How the balance of power in the labor market is shifting Businesses have been having a hard time finding people to hire, even though millions of Americans are still out of work. It seems like quite the conundrum. But that’s because half the story is left out, said Barry Ritholtz, chairman ...
06.14.2021 Why inflation can be a self-fulfilling prophecy Federal Reserve officials have some new inflation data to chew on before they head into a two-day meeting on interest rates tomorrow. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York released a consumer survey today that says consumers are expecting inflation ...
06.11.2021 How consumer behavior is affecting the economic recovery The University of Michigan’s preliminary June consumer sentiment numbers came out today, and although Americans are a little more confident in the economy and the recovery than they were in May, they’re still worried about inflation and the rising prices ...
06.10.2021 Why people are worried about inflation Consumer prices rose a little over half a percent in May. Over the last year, prices are up 5% — the biggest 12-month increase since August of 2008. It’s unclear so far whether the price hikes we’re seeing are a ...
06.09.2021 About those wine and cheese tariffs President Joe Biden arrived in Europe on Wednesday, kicking off a week of meetings. One item high on his agenda: trade, especially the tariffs levied by the U.S. and European Union. Yes, those are still a thing, and U.S. consumers ...
06.08.2021 The racial gap in appraisals devalues homes owned by people of color Explicit racial language was removed from the process of determining home values in the late 1970s, but a recent study found that a racial lens on appraisals still harms Black communities. On today’s show: How that gap is contributing to ...
06.07.2021 What will it actually take to achieve global tax reform? Representatives from G-7 countries agreed over the weekend to back a minimum corporate tax rate of 15%. A global minimum tax rate has a long way to go to get from theory to reality. But behind that theory is hundreds ...
06.04.2021 Jobs are up, but the labor force participation rate is down The U.S. economy added 559,000 jobs in May as the recovery from the pandemic recession continues. But there remain millions of Americans unemployed, and some have stopped looking for work entirely. This means the labor force participation rate has dropped ...
06.03.2021 The long-term challenges of long-term unemployment Although the U.S. labor market has recovered dramatically from the peak of pandemic unemployment, millions of workers remain on the sidelines. Forty-three percent of jobless workers are long-term unemployed, and economists warn that elevated long-term unemployment may persist for years ...
06.02.2021 The jobs available aren’t necessarily the ones people want The big economics story recently has been about why businesses are having trouble hiring workers when there are still millions of Americans who are unemployed. Employers are getting desperate while workers are in no hurry to go back to jobs ...
06.01.2021 What’s going on with the American workforce? The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in a report released today that we are in a workforce crisis. There’s an all-time high of 8.1 million job openings — and there are not enough available workers able, or willing, to take ...
05.31.2021 Tourist destinations are bracing for post-pandemic summer crowds This weekend traditionally marks the beginning of summer vacation season. It’s the moment when a lot of tourist destinations in the U.S. start to see crowds. And when folks who work at tourist attractions — and hotels and restaurants near ...
05.28.2021 More than a year into the pandemic, rent relief is finally reaching those who need it Come Tuesday, rent is due for millions of Americans. After more than a year of the pandemic, a lot of renters have fallen behind and are struggling to pay their rent. Congress appropriated $50 billion to help renters in the ...
05.27.2021 What’s driving rental car prices so high? Planning on renting a car this Memorial Day weekend? It’s going to cost you. A lot of people have been unpleasantly surprised lately when trying to book rental cars, with average rates now topping out around $134 a day. On ...
05.26.2021 Women are bearing substantial burdens from long-term unemployment It’s clear now that the pandemic has disproportionately affected women when it comes to employment. About 2.8 million women have left the labor force since COVID-19 hit in March 2020, compared to 2.4 million men. And there are a lot ...
05.25.2021 Why Black entrepreneurship surged during the pandemic New-business formation exploded during the first year of the pandemic. But a paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that those new businesses were concentrated in Black neighborhoods and that Black Americans were more likely than white Americans ...
05.24.2021 Have businesses kept their promises for racial justice? Tomorrow marks one year since George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis. Protesters across the country demanded racial justice, and a lot of big companies said they were committed to racial equity. Banks, tech companies and major retailers pledged monetary investments, ...
05.21.2021 The Federal Reserve is thinking about a digital dollar Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Thursday that the Fed will publish a report on central bank digital currency this summer. A central bank digital currency is kind of like Bitcoin, minus the chaos and volatility. So how would that ...
05.20.2021 Why long-term unemployment starts at 27 weeks Another 444,000 Americans filed first time unemployment claims last week, reaching the lowest level since March 2020. At the opposite end of the unemployment spectrum, 4.2 million Americans are long-term unemployed, meaning they’ve been jobless for 27 weeks or more. ...
05.19.2021 How disaggregated data leads to better policy Economic policy doesn’t always tell the whole story. That’s why economists like Rhonda Vonshay Sharpe, president of the Women’s Institute for Science, Equity and Race, are pushing government agencies to disaggregate data by breaking it down into categories like race, ...
05.18.2021 “We don’t have a day to lose” The International Energy Agency released a report saying if the world wants to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, we’ll need to change a lot and change it fast. But is it doable? On today’s show: What needs to happen ...
05.17.2021 Pipeline companies are trying to avoid regulation, despite major hack More than 11,000 gas stations are still out of gas, including over half those in North Carolina and nearly 70% of the stations in Washington, D.C. This comes five days after the Colonial Pipeline resumed operations after a ransomware hack ...
05.14.2021 What inflation, retail sales and relief payments are telling us about the economic recovery We got some inflation news this week, with consumer prices up 4.2% year over year. Retail sales in April were flat: 0% growth. And the latest $1,400 round of stimulus checks boosted Americans’ bank accounts. On today’s show: What all ...
05.13.2021 Labor shortage + desperate employers = rising wages “They are desperate,” said one labor market expert. “They” being businesses struggling to find workers — despite the 10 million unemployed Americans — as the economy continues to open back up. So some businesses are offering higher wages, including Chipotle ...
05.12.2021 Consumer prices jumped higher than expected Consumer prices are up 4.2% year over year. That’s the highest yearly jump since the Great Recession. A lot of prices increased more than expected, including those in communications and apparel. But travel-related prices are on fire. Compared to March, ...
05.11.2021 Small-business owners aren’t feeling great about the future Make no mistake, there are a lot of positives in this economy — vaccinations continue, shops and attractions are reopening, consumer spending is strong. The Small Business Optimism Index from the National Federation of Independent Business had a small uptick ...
05.10.2021 States are starting to drop out of federal pandemic unemployment programs Arkansas, Montana and South Carolina are pulling out of federal unemployment programs related to the pandemic. The Republican governors of the three states are saying the same thing: The benefits are too generous, and they’re preventing people from wanting to ...
05.07.2021 Making sense of a disappointing jobs report Most economists expected something like 1 million new jobs in April. Instead, there were 266,000 added — which isn’t going to make much of a dent in recovering the 8 million jobs we’re still down. The hiring slowdown is happening ...
05.06.2021 What’s driving the labor shortage? We got some signs that the job market is improving: Initial claims for state unemployment benefits last week fell under half a million for the first time since the pandemic began. Continuing claims also fell sharply. But employers and trade ...
05.05.2021 Who has leverage in the labor market? Friday’s jobs report marks one year since the release of one of the worst jobs reports in U.S. history; the economy had lost 20 million jobs in a single month. One year later, there are still millions of people unemployed, ...
05.04.2021 “I think I really began to question what is living” The pandemic prompted a lot of people to think about their values and identities, and that includes what they do for a living. According to Prudential’s Pulse of the American Worker Survey, 1 in 5 workers changed their line of ...
05.03.2021 The low-hanging fruit on Biden’s climate agenda President Joe Biden has made dealing with climate change a top priority of his administration. While Congress and the White House hammer out the way that shows up in the big infrastructure package, there are relatively easy fixes that have ...
04.30.2021 It could take quite a while for the labor market to recover from COVID The economic recovery is showing up in a big way: GDP is nearly back to pre-pandemic levels, and consumer confidence is improving as more Americans are vaccinated. There’s been a surge in consumer spending, driven by record-setting personal income — ...
04.29.2021 Do we really want to get back to a pre-pandemic economy? The Commerce Department announced Thursday that in the first quarter of 2021 gross domestic product grew at an annualized rate of 6.4%. That’s within 1% of pre-pandemic GDP. It’s easy to look back at the pre-pandemic economy all starry eyed; ...
04.28.2021 Pent-up demand for a vacation In a recent survey from the U.S. Travel Association, almost two-thirds of Americans said they “desperately” needed a vacation after the last year, and with vaccinations and accumulated paid time off, many of them just might get one. Employers prepare ...
04.27.2021 Why a Baltimore church is pledging half a million dollars in reparations In 2018, Natalie Conway was assigned to Memorial Episcopal Church as a deacon. Conway, now 73, grew up in segregated west Baltimore, and she and her brother had been researching their genealogy. Not long after she arrived at Memorial, she ...
04.26.2021 Investing in children and families is also infrastructure President Joe Biden is expected to roll out the next part of his big infrastructure initiative this week, the American Families Plan. The plan calls for major additional investment in education and child care — part of the Biden administration’s ...
04.23.2021 The stock market is … an idiot That’s the conclusion of “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal after a market freakout yesterday. What spooked it? News that the Biden administration wants to jack up the capital gains tax rate. “Have traders heard of the United States Senate?” our host ...
04.22.2021 U.S. trade rep: “We don’t exist in a vacuum” Ambassador Katherine Tai, the United States trade representative, said the world economy needs to evolve in order to solve global problems like climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. In an interview with “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal, Tai said we need ...
04.21.2021 How control over the pandemic will affect the stay-home economy While we were stuck at home, sales of paint, furniture, exercise equipment and groceries went through the roof. But as vaccination continues and things open back up, we’re more likely to take a trip than to redo our floors. On ...
04.20.2021 About China’s “poverty alleviation slow trains” The Biden administration’s push to upgrade American infrastructure is partly motivated by seeing China’s sleek infrastructure, including bullet trains that go more than 185 mph. These speedy trains have gradually replaced the slower, green-colored carriages. However, in recent years, the ...
04.19.2021 Not having paid time off can be a barrier to getting vaccinated As of today, all adults are eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine in the United States. The vaccine is free to the public, regardless of insurance. About half of all adults have received at least one dose in the U.S., ...
04.16.2021 Community pharmacists face challenges in vaccine rollout Across the country, pharmacies are struggling with insufficient staffing and endless phone calls from people trying to make appointments. They run into other problems, too, like patients who think one dose of a two-dose vaccine is enough. Health care workers ...
04.15.2021 How walk-in clinics could help achieve vaccination equity More than 123 million people have now received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, and around 3 million doses are being administered every day. Four months into the vaccination campaign, however, there are still significant disparities by race ...
04.14.2021 Will company culture come back after the pandemic? The concept of “company culture” is saddled with certain imagery in the imaginations of Americans: The trust exercises of decades gone by, the freewheeling indoor playground layout of Google offices, the oppressive pressure to produce at any given law firm. ...
04.13.2021 Welcome to Zoom Town, USA Over the past pandemic year, small, rural towns across the U.S. have been inundated with remote workers seeking beautiful landscapes and bigger houses. So common is the trend, the towns in question are being referred to as “Zoom towns.” On ...

Older episodes

Marketplace

What's Marketplace about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Marketplace episodes:

How Prime (spending) Day shines a light on quirks of the global supply chain

The cost of hygiene theater

Consumers aren’t worried about inflation … yet

The psychological toll of long-term unemployment

How the balance of power in the labor market is shifting

Why inflation can be a self-fulfilling prophecy

How consumer behavior is affecting the economic recovery

Why people are worried about inflation

About those wine and cheese tariffs

The racial gap in appraisals devalues homes owned by people of color

What will it actually take to achieve global tax reform?

Jobs are up, but the labor force participation rate is down

The long-term challenges of long-term unemployment

The jobs available aren’t necessarily the ones people want

What’s going on with the American workforce?

Tourist destinations are bracing for post-pandemic summer crowds

More than a year into the pandemic, rent relief is finally reaching those who need it

What’s driving rental car prices so high?

Women are bearing substantial burdens from long-term unemployment

Why Black entrepreneurship surged during the pandemic

Have businesses kept their promises for racial justice?

The Federal Reserve is thinking about a digital dollar

Why long-term unemployment starts at 27 weeks

How disaggregated data leads to better policy

“We don’t have a day to lose”

Pipeline companies are trying to avoid regulation, despite major hack

What inflation, retail sales and relief payments are telling us about the economic recovery

Labor shortage + desperate employers = rising wages

Consumer prices jumped higher than expected

Small-business owners aren’t feeling great about the future

States are starting to drop out of federal pandemic unemployment programs

Making sense of a disappointing jobs report

What’s driving the labor shortage?

Who has leverage in the labor market?

“I think I really began to question what is living”

The low-hanging fruit on Biden’s climate agenda

It could take quite a while for the labor market to recover from COVID

Do we really want to get back to a pre-pandemic economy?

Pent-up demand for a vacation

Why a Baltimore church is pledging half a million dollars in reparations

Investing in children and families is also infrastructure

The stock market is … an idiot

U.S. trade rep: “We don’t exist in a vacuum”

How control over the pandemic will affect the stay-home economy

About China’s “poverty alleviation slow trains”

Not having paid time off can be a barrier to getting vaccinated

Community pharmacists face challenges in vaccine rollout

How walk-in clinics could help achieve vaccination equity

Will company culture come back after the pandemic?

Welcome to Zoom Town, USA

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