Support the fact-based journalism you rely on with a donation to Marketplace today. Give Now!

Telework could help tribes curb outmigration, but Native workers are being left behind

Nov 18, 2022
Native people are overrepresented in “essential” fields, and underrepresented in office jobs that are more likely to allow telework. 
Native people are disproportionately left out of telework, according to a recent Brookings  Institution report.
Getty Images

How is digital tipping affecting service workers?

Jun 18, 2021
As more companies move toward digital payments, that could create complications for employees.
A close up of a customer paying in a pharmacy with her mobile phone.
Geber86/Getty Images

Workers in food jobs at greatest risk of death in pandemic, study finds

Jan 27, 2021
Low-wage essential workers are dying at higher rates. Public health measures and vaccine distribution are needed to protect them.
Research shows the need for public health measures and vaccine distribution to protect essential workers like those on farms. Above, plastic dividers separate workers on a farm in California.
Brent Stirton/Getty Images

There's a push to mandate hazard pay at the local level

Jan 13, 2021
With COVID-19 spreading out of control, it's never been riskier for front-line workers.
Cashier Olga Jiminez, clad in mask and gloves, at work at Presidente Supermarket in Miami in April. Many companies that provided hazard pay early in the pandemic eventually phased it out.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Restaurant workers in D.C. next up for vaccination

Jan 8, 2021
If you are a restaurant worker in Washington, D.C., you will be eligible to get a COVID-19 vaccination in February.
A waiter serves customers at a restaurant.
Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

Transit agencies get $14 billion in relief, with ridership still down

Dec 29, 2020
The money will let agencies avoid doomsday scenarios of thousands of layoffs and drastic service cuts.
A woman exits a Brooklyn subway station on Nov. 18, 2020, in New York City.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images

For public good, not for profit.

Teachers move near the front of the line for vaccine

Dec 21, 2020
It's up to states to decide if teachers qualify as frontline essential workers, given that they're able to work remotely.
A teacher helps her first-grade student during in-person class at an elementary school in Stamford, Connecticut, in September.
John Moore/Getty Images

Essential worker parents struggle with remote school

Dec 17, 2020
Those who work outside the home must often rely on family or pay for help to supervise kids.
Dealing with daycare disruptions and remote school have been especially hard on essential worker parents.
Rose Conlon/Marketplace

Which essential workers should be prioritized for vaccines?

Dec 11, 2020
Pilots, bankers, meatpacking plants and teachers all say they should be first for limited doses.
Farm laborers wash their hands before work in April in Greenfield, California. How are "essential workers" classified when it comes to vaccine distribution?
Brent Stirton/Getty Images