Supply & Demand

A trove of data reveals that when people moved away from dense and expensive metro areas during the pandemic, many didn’t go far.

Joe Sobol, owner of Big Easy Construction in New Orleans, has bad news for homeowners who've been calling about roofs damaged by Hurricane Ida or to get an update on renovations that were scheduled before the storm ripped through the area.

Smartphones can contain ~80% of the stable elements on the periodic table. This graphic details the critical metals you carry in your pocket.

Podcasters might increasingly question whether Spotify’s $$$ is worth limiting their exposure on other platforms.

Dropped my double-shot latte... The cost of coffee beans has soared 43% so far this year, according to NYT. A combo of factors are making beans...

Climate shocks in Brazil and shipping bottlenecks have pushed the price of coffee beans sharply higher. Starbucks says it won’t be affected for more than a year, but small cafes can’t hold off that long.

Homes in metro Detroit are selling faster than ever, as prices continue to rise and the number of houses on the market further shrinks.Data from Realcomp II Limited, a multiple listing service, shows homes in southern Michigan are selling at their fastest pace since tracking began in 2003…

ROCKFORD — An invasive bug that could threaten Michigan's Christmas tree industry has been discovered in the western part of the state. The Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development said Monday it confirmed the presence of the balsam woolly adelgid near Rockford in Kent County. …

$15 an hour is suddenly the rule, not the exception, for U.S. workers. It’s a major shift from pre-pandemic.

Data show average fares were at a record in July despite an improvement in the pandemic-driven shortage of drivers.

Molly Doyle stretches her shoulder as she preps a syringe of Versed — a brand of midazolam drug engineered to sedate patients for medical procedures. The pediatric dentist is prepping for her first of three procedures for the day. This one is the last four of 12 crowns on a 4-year-old child…

Our everyday routines changed over the past year, and with the 2020 American Time Use Survey, we can see by how much.

Have some patience for that neighbor with the unkempt grass this summer — it could be the supply chain disruptions of the past year just won't get off their lawn.Supply chain woes, from lawn and garden equipment to the global computer chip shortage afflicting the auto industry, continue to…

San Francisco has among the strongest tenant protections in the country, which encourages tenants to hang on to apartments as market prices go up.

Sales of masks surged 24% for the week ended Tuesday. Analysts expect the sales to jump even more after the updated CDC guidance

Roughly 180 University of Notre Dame students and faculty have signed an open letter calling on the school’s Campus Dining division to nix the proposed new shop.

Crank out the piggy bank... If you're still signing field trip forms, a $300 check could be on its way. Today, the US government starts sending...

Apple Pay purchases could soon be broken up into installments

(Bloomberg) -- Lumber, which at one point was among the world’s best-performing commodities as the pandemic sent construction demand soaring and stoked fears of inflation, has officially wiped out all of its staggering gains for the year.Prices at Monday’s close are now down 0.6% for the year as demand eases and supply expands in response to earlier gains. The rally turned a common building product into a social media sensation and a flash point in the debate over U.S. monetary policy. At one po

The rises threaten to drive up costs at the breakfast table as the world’s biggest coffee producer, Brazil, faces one of its worst droughts in almost a century.

In 2016, the federal minimum wage of $7.25 was worth 25 percent less than at its peak value in 1968, after adjusting for inflation.

The partial collapse of the Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Fla., has plunged older beachside condos and high-rise buildings like it into a swirl of apprehension.

Restrictions on most indoor activities during the COVID-19 pandemic turned our entire society inside out — literally. Parks, campgrounds and secluded short-term rentals filled up. Bicycles, roller skates and RVs sold out. Michigan businesses have dealt with pandemic-enforced restrictions and…

(Bloomberg) -- U.S. home prices jumped the most in more than 30 years in April.Nationally, the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller index of property values climbed 14.6% from a year earlier, according to a statement Tuesday, the biggest gain in data going back to 1988. That came after 13.2% increase in March, and was the 11th straight month that price gains accelerated.Home prices in 20 U.S. cities, meanwhile, jumped 14.9%, beating the median estimate in a survey of Bloomberg economists and was the bigge

Jerry Bridges looks at his books and sees black, but nothing else about the numbers over the past year-and-a-half are normal.There's never been so many people looking for an RV or fifth wheel at Lloyd Bridges Traveland in Chelsea. Even so, sales volume is down 40 percent from last year."I can't get…

It's not your imagination: Everyone is suddenly skating. As COVID-19 public health measures restricted indoor activities, outdoor recreation flourished, and people explored new ways of safely getting beyond their four walls and moving their bodies for physical and mental wellness.   Seems skating has gotten an extra boost, too, from TikTok and Instagram, where reels of neat tricks set to peppy music have inspired people to lace up some skates for the first time — or for the first time in a while. (That is, if they can find a pair: The Wall Street Journal reported in March that the roller skate supply chain is one of many that's been kinked up by a surge in demand.) Local skate parks, which have proliferated in recent years, have been bustling. We sent photographer Nic Antaya to some area skating hot spots to capture the view of the world on four wheels. It's a study of motion, merriment and crowds in public spaces again, in the best way. This story is part of a special report on Michigan's outdoor economy.  — Amy Elliott Bragg