Marketplace

Starting this week, not wearing one on the New York City subway could cost you $50. We’re talking about the behavioral economics in a pandemic today. Plus: retail sales, all the movies being pushed back and, of course, the latest from Fed Chair Jerome Powell.

No, not that kind of diet. We’re kicking off the show today talking about food: where we go out to eat it, where we buy it. First up, we’ll examine the hiring slowdown in restaurants, then we’ll look at the rise of online-only “dark” grocery stores. Later, we’ll look at N95 mask laws to protect agriculture workers and others who are in the smoke right now. Plus: election money, dentists and college esports.

In the saga over the Chinese video app TikTok, Walmart and Microsoft are out and Oracle is in. They’re close to a deal, but Chinese media is reporting that Oracle won’t be getting TikTok’s algorithm. We’ll take you through what that would mean. Plus stories about volunteer firefighters, frequent fliers and Black women entrepreneurs in Detroit.

It’s been 184 days, or six months, since the coronavirus pandemic started. Today, we’re gonna check in on how things are going with our personal economies, with the stalled federal relief plan, with Brexit (remember Brexit?) and more. But oh, that all sounds like a drag, let’s get excited for the next “Verzuz.”

More than 800,000 people filed new state unemployment claims last week, but job gains are way up, too. Today on the show: what churn in the labor market can tell us about this economy. Plus: Voting at arenas, wildfire insurance and why homeowners are better equipped for this recession than renters.

The story about voting in arenas in this episode contained an error that has been corrected. For more information, visit the episode page at marketplace.org

And not just because it’s nearly fall. Today, we’re looking at how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed all kinds of businesses, like trans-Pacific trade, luxury retail, petroleum barges and takeout. Plus, we’ll follow several workers as they journey back to the office after months away to pick up their stuff.

Long before he’d start Netflix, consider selling it to Blockbuster for a song and get a 10-year head start in the streaming wars, Reed Hastings was getting coffee at a dot-com company. On today’s show, Hastings will tell us about Netflix’s path to dominance and where it’s going next. Plus: “Tenet’s” box office performance, the thousands of furloughs turning into layoffs and Angela Merkel’s economic legacy.

For workers who have been at home all summer, many of whom lack AC, the heat this summer has been a bigger problem than the past. And it’s only getting worse with a record-breaking heat wave hitting California this Labor Day weekend. Electricity use has decreased overall during the pandemic, but residential energy use is up. Basically, workers — for the most part — are paying for AC themselves. But some states have strict reimbursement laws for working-at-home costs. Plus: hotels are still struggling, only 3% of financial regulators in the U.S. have been Black and talking to kids about money requires honesty.

Under normal circumstances, gaining 1.4 million jobs in August would have been incredible for this economy. But this isn’t any other August, and it comes a few months after the U.S. lost a full 15% of its jobs. On today’s show, we’ll look at the progress the country is making digging out of that hole. Plus: home refinancing, Campbell’s soup and the life of a children’s entertainer in the age of Zoom birthday parties.

First-time unemployment claims were down last week to about 881,000, their lowest point since the pandemic started. But last week was also the first report since the Bureau of Labor Statistics changed how it does seasonal adjustment. That’s a formula the bureau uses so it doesn’t seem like the sky is falling when thousands of seasonal jobs disappear in January. But now the sky really is falling, so the adjustment needed adjusting. We’ll explain. Plus: Farmers’ economic outlook, racial inequities in health and what it’s like running a mall right now.