Oct 06 What it’s really like to be an Uber driver By Making Sen$e Editor You've heard about Uber taking business away from traditional taxicab drivers, and their ire toward the competition. But what is it like to drive an Uber, specifically your own car as an UberX? The drivers Making Sen$e spoke to gave… Continue reading
Oct 03 Watch Broad-based jobs growth signals stronger U.S. economy, but wages still lag By PBS News Hour Continue watching
Oct 03 A two-tiered jobs report for a two-tiered economy By Simone Pathe With the unemployment rate dipping below 6 percent for the first time since the summer of 2008, and payroll gains of 248,000, September's headline employment data points to a real economic recovery -- with jobs. But last month wasn't so… Continue reading
Oct 02 Watch Is the traditional taxicab an endangered species? By PBS News Hour Increasingly popular ride-sharing services have attracted customers at a rate that some say endangers the cab industry. Economics correspondent Paul Solman reports on the new surge of unregulated competition on the road. Continue watching
Oct 02 Uber the unfair? Are ride-sharing firms exploiting deregulation? By Simone Pathe Ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft have responded to public demand in a way traditional taxi cabs have not been able to, says Hansu Kim, owner of San Francisco's third-largest taxi company. But that's come at the expense of passenger… Continue reading
Oct 01 Think tenure protects you? With wealthy donors and less public funding, think again By Denise Cummins Tenure isn't all it's cracked up to be, argues Denise Cummins. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where Cummins used to teach as an adjunct, recently rescinded a job offer made to professor Steven Salaita -- even though he had… Continue reading
Oct 01 Six years after Lehman, debating Fed independence and bank insolvency By Simone Pathe The six-year anniversary of the month when Lehman Brothers failed, and brought down much of the financial sector with it, was a rough one for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Continue reading
Sep 29 Why are fewer people going to college? By Simone Pathe In an economy where college graduates earn significantly more than high school grads and enjoy a much lower unemployment rate, why are fewer people enrolling in college? Enrollment has dropped by nearly a million since 2011. Is this an expected… Continue reading
Sep 26 The Ray Rice video last week; today, the ear-opening audio from inside the Fed By Simone Pathe The financial world woke up to an unsettling surprise Friday. Former New York Fed employee Carmen Segarra recorded 46 hours of private meetings inside the Fed, revealing the institution's often too-cozy relationship with the too-big-to-fail banks it's charged with regulating. Continue reading
Sep 26 So you want a job? You’d better be in the right neighborhood By Making Sen$e Editor There's a spatial mismatch between the availability of jobs and the people who need them most. There are various ways to close that physical distance, from the individual to public policy level. A new paper from the National Bureau of… Continue reading