By The Numbers

The economics of arcade claw games

Tony Wagner Apr 3, 2015
126,000

That’s how many U.S. jobs were added in March, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s jobs report released on Friday. The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 5.5 percent.

$64,432

Another bummer from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: average household income dropped for the second year in a row to $64,432. The Washington Post’s Wonkblog notes the richest fifth of Americans saw their income rise by 0.9 percent before taxes, while the poorest fifth lost 3.5 percent.

$11.5 billion

That’s the total costs of deferred maintenance for the National Parks Service. Of that figure, $850 million is attributed to the National Mall and Memorial Parks. Which means monuments like the Jefferson Memorial will have to wait on repairs such as a new ceiling.

4 percent

The portion of homes in Cuba with Internet access, one potential hurtle in Airbnb’s recent expansion there, Bloomberg reported. There are about 1,000 listings up now, with more surely on the way. Airbnb is one of the first American companies to have a presence in Cuba since the U.S. reestablished diplomatic ties there.

1 in 23

The number of wins an arcade claw machine would have to allow to give the owner 50 percent profits. Vox looked into just how rigged those games are, finding that most machines let the owner adjust how often a claw grabs at stuffed animals with their full strength, tightly managing wins and losses.

40 clues

That’s about how many hidden clues lead motion designer Mark Paterson hid in a single episode of FX’s Archer. The Easter egg hunt led viewers on an epic internet journey, which included a so-called HEX code, which led to a URL, which led to a weird YouTube video and then a craigslist advertisement … the list goes on. 

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