Journalists often make mistakes when reporting on data such as opinion poll results, federal jobs reports and census surveys because they don’t quite understand — or they ignore — the data’s margin of error.
When the economy enters a recession, pundits are quick to trot out unemployment numbers to argue about the health of the economy or the success of the government’s response.
Of course, job loss should be front and center when talking about the economy, but companies have more options than just hiring and firing employees.
Over the past year, public school teachers in different parts of the country have held strikes to increase salaries and push for other changes. Such protests often mark a breakdown in negotiations between the school district and local teachers union.
As American lawmakers argue over whether to fund a wall along the United States’ southwestern border, the federal government has moved ahead with plans to replace some of the fencing it built there years ago with a 30-foot-tall steel bollard wall. Meanwhile, a growing number of countries worldwide have built border walls and other barriers to try to control the flow of people and goods.
Are workplace recovery programs successful in helping people to quit abusing drugs and avoid relapsing? A growing field of research suggests the answer is yes, though their success may have more to do with incentives than the nature of work itself.
Houses are built to stay upright. We eat in them, sleep in them, we produce trash that goes out, and we purchase goods that come in. But when there’s an earthquake, houses that are less structurally sound may collapse. If the house is destroyed, the normal equilibrium of things going in and out changes. New products and services are brought in to rebuild the house. Old products and services become less essential for a time.
The old balance gives way to a new normal.
