Marketplace Morning Report Stories

Tesla has installed its first solar roofs on the homes of some of its company executives. Instead of large panels, these roofs use tiles that look virtually indistinguishable from regular roofs. Solar power that looks nice and protects your home? Sounds like an idea that could sell itself. At least, that’s what Tesla’s counting on.  […]

The World Bank has just issued $360 million in so-called “catastrophe bonds” in collaboration with Mexico. Global investors snapped up the bonds — the first issued directly by the World Bank — which will help Mexico cover emergency relief costs in the event of a major hurricane or earthquake, should one hit. 

Last month's jobs report is officially in: the U.S. economy added 209,000 jobs in July, with the unemployment rate ticking down to 4.3 percent. Christopher Low, chief economist at FTN Financial, joined us to put the numbers into context and share how he thinks Janet Yellen and co. might react to the report. Afterwards, we'll discuss the U.S. Virgin Islands' economic woes, which it's trying to help solve by imposing $25-a-day timeshare fees.

Amazon announced this week that it’s going to apply its hassle-free returns policy to all items purchased on the website from October. That’s good news for consumers, but it’s a new burden for some third-party Amazon sellers, who, until now, could have policies of their own.  Click the audio player above to hear the full […]

As unemployment continues to fall and employers scramble to find the workers they need, demographic groups that traditionally lag economically are benefiting. The unemployment rate for African-Americans fell to 7.1 percent in June, just shy of the all-time low of 7 percent hit in April 2000. Unemployment rates for young people and those with a […]

Sure, the U.S. economy is creating jobs, but wages have stagnated. Is the job market feeling a little familiar these days? It might, if you lived through the '90s. Diane Swonk from DS Economics shares some parallels between our current labor market, and how it was doing a couple of decades ago. Afterwards, we'll look at Trump's support of a new proposal that would dramatically scale back immigration, and then talk about a shortage in trial lawyers.