new video loaded: What the Unemployment Rate Isn’t Telling Us By Lydia DePillis, Christina Thornell, Laura Salaberry, Jon Hazell, Gabriel Blanco and Laura Bult•September 5, 2025 The latest job report shows that unemployment remains steady, but it’s not telling the full story. Lydia DePillis, economy reporter for The New York Times, explains how low job growth is being offset by the Trump administration’s deportation campaign.

“Transforming Spaces” is a series about women driving change in sometimes unexpected places. Jam the towel under the door. Open the window. And hide the bong. For decades, college students have found ways to mask the pungent aroma of marijuana smoke on campuses. Wanda James, however, did not always feel a need to hide. A 1986 graduate of the University of Colorado Boulder, Ms. James would sit on the steps outside her dorm and roll joints with her friends. It would be decades before Colorado became one of the first two states in the country to legalize recreational cannabis, but…

Do you think the gaps have always been there or are they becoming more common now? The situations that are coming up now seem like they are more frequent. But it’s really important to understand that we don’t think of ourselves as a substitute for social safety nets. What we are is a complement to whatever you’re getting from the government or the institutions in the society that you live in. The thing that we do as well, which is very, very different, is the emotional support that a GoFundMe campaign offers. It’s the fact that your family, your friends,…

While Panera Bread is often situated in strip malls alongside other fast casual restaurants, the company has long been a pioneer of using quality ingredients and promoting healthy choices. It was among the first companies to add calorie counts to its menus, and it maintains a “No No List” of more than 150 substances — such as high-fructose corn syrup and aspartame — that it will not use in its recipes. Niren Chaudhary, the company’s chief executive since 2019, did not make his career working with companies with the same focus. He spent 23 years with Yum Brands, building out…

VENICE, Italy — From the time he was a child, Edoardo Beniamin could envision paddling a gondola through the waterways of Venice, his native city. He saw himself, dressed in a striped jersey and ribboned straw hat, following his father and an uncle into a profession that has served as the enduring symbol of La Serenissima for a thousand years. “To be a gondolier was always my dream,” Mr. Beniamin, 22, said one bright winter day in a Venice rendered vacant by a wave of Covid-19 sweeping across Europe. Seated at an outdoor cafe near the San Zaccaria waterbus station…

Arvind Krishna is trying to stay in touch with the company’s roots as he confronts today’s challenges.

LONDON — Scotland gained worldwide praise when it passed a pioneering period act, making tampons and pads free by law and instructing schools to make them available in every building. One region even instituted a “period dignity officer.” Then the role was given to a man. The appointment of Jason Grant, a former personal trainer, as the coordinator of the menstruation dignity plan in Scotland’s Tayside region, north of Edinburgh, led to bewilderment and widespread criticism. On Monday, the role was scrapped. “Given the threats and abuse leveled at individuals in recent weeks, the period dignity regional lead officer role…

Until the African penguin starts observing federal holidays, Sparks Perkins won’t either. Which is to say the morning of Dec. 25 will bring not presents and mistletoe for the 33-year-old San Franciscan, but beak trims and fish guts. A biologist at the California Academy of Sciences’s Steinhart Aquarium, Mr. Perkins belongs to that unfaltering set — hospital personnel, firefighters, point guards — whose work pauses for no holiday. Call him essential avian personnel, tethered to the needs of the resident 50 or so birds. Weekends, late nights: All fair game for whatever emergencies arise among Mr. Perkins’s flock. “I’ve worked…

The retail industry is trying to figure out its correct size. Retailers, faced with sky-high demand from shoppers during the pandemic, spent the past three years ramping up their operations in areas like human resources, finance and technology. Now, times have changed. A public that rushed to buy all sorts of goods in the earlier parts of the pandemic is now spending less on merchandise like furniture and clothing. E-commerce, which boomed during lockdowns, has fallen from those heights. And with consumers worried about inflation in the prices of day-to-day necessities like food, companies are playing defense. Saks Off 5th,…

“Transforming Spaces” is a series about women driving change in sometimes unexpected places. It takes a lot of people to make a movie. You’ve got the director for overall vision, the gaffer on the lights, the set decorators to add texture to the film’s world, and the costume designers to envision the actors’ looks. And when those costumes come off and things start to get a bit steamy? That’s where Jessica Steinrock comes in. Ms. Steinrock is an intimacy coordinator — or intimacy director, when she’s working on theater and live performance — who facilitates the production of scenes involving…

For the past several years, Ms. Jones has been developing one central philosophy: Because Black women have historically been concentrated in low-paid caregiving jobs, which are often excluded from labor laws and benefits like Social Security, they have accumulated less wealth and experienced worse health outcomes. Furthermore, Ms. Jones argues, helping Black women — through measures like raising wages in care professions and canceling more student debt — is the best way to construct an economy that functions better for everyone. In 2020, she gave her narrative a name, “Black Women Best.” She came up with it while working for…

He also had a big dream: to bring the food of their home country to Detroit. He competed in a local entrepreneurship program in 2017, and the couple won the $50,000 prize to help them get their restaurant started. They finally opened the doors to their airy restaurant, Baobab Fare, in early 2021 — in the throes of the pandemic. The accolades have rolled in. In February, the couple were named for the second time as semifinalists for best chef in the James Beard awards, and in March, Mr. Mamba won an episode of “Chopped,” a cooking competition on the…

The gulf between Black and white unemployment rates in New York City is now the widest it has been this century, exceeding even the largest gap during the Great Recession, according to a new report. In the first three months of the year, the unemployment rate for Black New Yorkers rose to 12.2 percent, the highest rate of any group, while the white unemployment rate dropped to 1.3 percent, the lowest it has been since 2000, according to the report, which was released Thursday by the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School. The overall unemployment rate…

Making It Work is a series is about small-business owners striving to endure hard times. Hakki Akdeniz, the founder of the Champion Pizza chain in New York City, speaks freely about his past. When he first moved to the United States from Canada in 2001, he was homeless, sleeping in subway cars and at Grand Central Terminal before staying at a shelter for three months. Mr. Akdeniz’s experience is featured prominently on the website of Champion Pizza, and the company’s dedication to supporting people who are homeless is key to its mission. Mr. Akdeniz, 43, is part of a growing group of…

“Making It Work” is a series is about small-business owners striving to endure hard times. When Precious Price bought her first home four years ago in Atlanta while working as a marketing consultant, she took advantage of her frequent business trips by renting out her house on Airbnb during her absences. “I knew I wanted to use that as a rental or investment property,” she said. “I began doing that, and it was honestly very lucrative.” For Ms. Price, 27, and other young entrepreneurs of color, online short-term rental platforms like Airbnb and Vrbo represented a path to building wealth…

“Making It Work” is a series about small-business owners striving to endure hard times. When Kenneth Laskin flew to California to meet with executives at Burgerim, a start-up chain of restaurants, he was made to feel not just like another prospective franchisee, but like part of a family. The company’s executives, he said, made a point one evening of highlighting their common Jewish faith by praying with him in Hebrew. At the time, in 2017, Mr. Laskin believed he was being offered a plum deal. He paid $50,000 for the right to open up as many Burgerim franchised restaurants as…

In January 2021, Mary Gundel received a letter from Dollar General’s corporate office congratulating her for being one of the company’s top-performing employees. In honor of her hard work and dedication, the company gave Ms. Gundel a lapel pin that read, “DG: Top 5%.” “Wear it proudly,” the letter said. Ms. Gundel did just that, affixing the pin to her black-and-yellow Dollar General uniform, next to her name badge. “I wanted the world to see it,” she said. Ms. Gundel loved her job managing the Dollar General store in Tampa, Fla. It was fast-paced, unpredictable and even exciting. She especially…

“It’s Never Too Late” is a series that tells the stories of people who decide to pursue their dreams on their own terms. Joanna Patchett has always had a fear of death, and the dying. “I was terrified of being responsible for people’s lives, and was frightened of the space between life and death,” she said. And yet in July 2020, as coronavirus cases filled up hospitals, Ms. Patchett, who was fresh out of nursing school, found herself caring for extremely ill Covid patients in the intensive care unit at Binghamton General Hospital in upstate New York. “Seeing how sick…