Stephanie Hughes

Senior Reporter

SHORT BIO

Stephanie Hughes is a senior reporter at Marketplace. She’s focused on education and the economy, and lives in Brooklyn.

She's reported on topics including the effectiveness of technology used by schools to prevent violence, startups that translate global climate data for homebuyers, and why theater majors are getting jobs writing for chatbots.

Previously, she worked as a producer for Bloomberg, where she covered finance, technology, and economics. Before that, she worked as the senior producer for “Maryland Morning,” broadcast on WYPR, the NPR affiliate in Baltimore. She’s also reported for other media outlets, including NPR’s “Morning Edition,” “All Things Considered,” “The Takeaway,” and Salon.

At WYPR, she helped produce the year-long, multi-platform series “The Lines Between Us,” which won a 2014 duPont-Columbia Award. She’s also interested in using crowdsourcing to create online projects, such as this interactive map of flags around Maryland, made from listener contributions.

A native of southern Delaware, Stephanie graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in communications, studying at the Annenberg School. Before she found her way to radio, she worked in the children’s division of the publishing house Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Latest Stories (508)

Fewer cranes on the horizon? Banking tumult could slow nonresidential construction

Mar 28, 2023
Smaller and regional banks are major lenders not only for office construction, but also building projects like hospitals, educational institutions and ports.
Cranes on a construction site in southeast Baltimore work to build office space. Spending for non-residential projects is up nearly 16% in the past year, according to the Census Bureau, and that is due in part to rising building costs.
Stephanie Hughes/Marketplace

Why CDs are music to banks' ears right now

Mar 27, 2023
Certificates of Deposit help banks bring in cash that they can use to make money by lending it at higher rates. Depositors may be looking to CDs as interest rates rise.
According to the Federal Reserve, the amount invested in large CDs — specifically, with accounts holding $100,000 or more — has gone up nearly 44% in the past year.
Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

Will franchise films like "John Wick" get people back in theaters?

Mar 24, 2023
At least three big franchise sequels have come out this month, which could get the public back in the movie-going habit.
March franchise film releases like "John Wick: Chapter 4," starring Keanu Reeves, may help draw people back to theaters.
Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images

How a tight labor market has made way for educators to strike

Mar 22, 2023
The ongoing strike by Los Angeles educators is being fueled largely by high demand for workers.
Los Angeles Unified School District workers and supporters rally outside LAUSD headquarters on the first day of a strike over a new contract on March 21.
Mario Tama/Getty Images

Is Switzerland still synonymous with safe banking?

Mar 20, 2023
Switzerland’s reputation for secure, secret banking goes back to at least WW I. But its banks have changed over time, with mixed results.
UBS was reportedly worried that if Credit Suisse went bankrupt, it could have threatened the image of Swiss banking.
Fabric Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images

What something called "supercore inflation" can tell us about the current economy

Mar 15, 2023
It’s a spending category that looks at core services other than housing. The Fed says it could be key to understanding the future of inflation.
Paying for a haircut or hiring a landscaper are all purchases measured in supercore inflation. The price of these services can also be linked to the wages people are paid to do them.
Hispanolistic/Getty Images

Financial meltdowns often spur changes to financial regulation. So where do we go from here?

Mar 14, 2023
Regulators didn't catch Silicon Valley Bank before it failed. What can they do to catch others?
The Federal Reserve Board announced yesterday that it’s going to review what happened with the Silicon Valley Bank closure. Time will tell if more regulations will be placed upon larger banks like SVB and if banks themselves will take a closer look at their own risk committees.
Alex Wong/Getty Images

Who's responsible for paying the failed banks’ depositors?

Mar 14, 2023
The money’s coming from a fund run by the FDIC that derives most of its revenue from banks.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which insures bank deposits, said it will shoulder the load of covering deposits at the failed Silicon Valley and Signature banks.
Getty Images

SoFi is suing the Biden administration over student loan payment pause

Mar 8, 2023
The fintech firm, which offers student loan refinancing, says the repayment freeze damages its bottom line. Here's what that could mean for borrowers.
Private lender SoFi argues that it can't compete with essentially no-interest federal student loans since the pause began.
Katelyn Mulcahy/Getty Images

The global economic cost of gender inequality in the workplace? $7 trillion per year

Mar 6, 2023
A new study finds that more women in the workforce — and fewer roadblocks to their success — could grow the global economy significantly by boosting productivity.
Actions like lowering child care costs could lower the barriers to women entering the workforce.
Jaime Reina/AFP via Getty Images