Marketplace®
Every story is an economic story
  • The Census Bureau was supposed to release figures on last November’s factory orders today. But thanks to the partial shutdown of the federal government, the Census Bureau is closed. Marketplace’s Mitchell Hartman looks into what data business decision-makers and investors will have to do without while the shutdown continues, what data will keep flowing (from […]

  • The FCC is considering a ban on Chinese telecom hardware like that made by telecom giant ZTE.
    Lluis Gene/AFP/Getty Images

    Washington regulators are debating a ban on Chinese telecom hardwire, but rural America may pay the price.

  • "The costs are high — and they vary hugely from hospital to hospital," says Vox's Sarah Kliff. "Case in point: I found one hospital charging $1 for a squirt of an antibiotic ointment called bacitracin —and another charging $76."
    Joe Raedle/Getty Images

    In some hospitals, you could pay thousands of dollars just to sit in the waiting room.

  • This fall saw college applications go out, and for some lucky students, early admissions letters came in. If students accept, the contracts are binding. The rest of the applicants? They have to wait until the spring to find out their fates. But increasingly, colleges have a second round. Click the audio player above to hear […]

  • Movies today have increasingly complex visual effects, like "Star Wars: The Last Jedi," which credits over 20 different visual effects companies.
    Anne-Christine Poujoulat/AFP/Getty Images

    If you took some time over the holidays to catch a movie or two, chances are you sat through a lot of stuff that was not the movie, but a list of names on a screen. You get the pre-movie credits, you get the post-movie credits, which might have an Easter egg hidden in them, […]

  • Job hunters say they are getting back into the workforce for income stability
    Drew Angerer/Getty Images

    The latest jobs numbers suggest that more people are looking for work, with the labor force participation rate ticking up a bit in December. So who’s looking for work, and what’s driving them back into the job market? To find out, we talked to some people who are looking for a job and some who […]

  • Employment seekers attend the JobExpo employment fair in New York City.
    Mario Tama/Getty Images

    Employers added 312,000 jobs in December, according to the Labor Department. That’s far more jobs than expected. And yet, the unemployment rate rose from 3.7 to 3.9 percent. More jobs, higher unemployment. How’s that work? It has something to do with the labor force participation rate. Click the audio player above to hear the full […]

  • Can the jobs report predict the future of the economy?
    Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

    The Labor Department’s jobs report for December was unequivocally strong, but it can be hard to square a good month of hiring with predictions of an economic slowdown and the market turbulence as of late. But when it comes to economic data, there’s a difference between learning how the economy’s been doing and how the […]

  • Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images

    Robert Kaplan, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, on Thursday told Bloomberg that the Fed ought to think about slowing down how quickly it’s shrinking its balance sheet. What’s a balance sheet? It’s a ledger of the Fed’s assets and liabilities that, in the middle of the financial crisis, the Fed expanded as […]

  • Big Pharma is betting big on cancer drugs
    pxhere

    Bristol-Myers Squibb announced Thursday that it’s going to acquire another drugmaker, Celgene. The deal is worth about $74 billion. The combined company will have nine products with sales of more than a billion dollars a year, including some blockbuster cancer drugs. The merger is a sign that Big Pharma is betting big on cancer medications. […]