Author: Marketplace

From the BBC World Service: India’s government has approved a $5 billion credit line to support its struggling exporters, as Indian workers across sectors like textiles, jewelry, and seafood face major potential job losses. Then, attendees of COP30 are hoping for a U.N.-backed deal to impose a levy on emissions for large ships. Research also presented at the climate summit warns that global carbon emissions from coal, oil, and gas are set to reach a record high in 2025.

Tech firms are racing to develop robot assistants that can take over our dreaded household chores. But teaching machines to perform these deceptively simple tasks is tedious. They need to observe the actions thousands, sometimes millions of times. And there's a cottage industry springing up to provide this training.

Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Ayanna Howard, roboticist and dean of Ohio State University’s college of engineering, to learn more.

Consumers may have revved up their spending in October, but spending more doesn’t mean getting more — prices are also up this holiday season. In this episode, why most shoppers feel like they're doing less with more. Plus: Auto loan delinquencies rise, mortgage applications heat up during an often-chilly season, and Kai explains the price-earnings ratio of the S&P 500, which is at a decades-high.

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President Donald Trump and Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte have floated the idea of a 50-year mortgage as a potential way to make homebuying more affordable. The president has said that longer mortgages would lower borrowers’ monthly payments, which is true — but at what cost? And later, 47 economists filed an amicus brief in Trump's tariffs case before the Supreme Court. We'll unpack what they said.

After 43 days, the government shutdown could end today. But there are still lingering questions: When will food stamps be distributed to beneficiaries? When will government workers receive paychecks? As for all of the economic data we missed while government agencies were closed? It won’t be released immediately once the government reopens — far from it. Then, the shuttering of the IRS' Direct File program and climate talks in Brazil.

From the BBC World Service: Australia is increasingly vulnerable to "high-impact sabotage" from hackers backed by China, according to Australian intelligence official Mike Burgess. He told business leaders in Melbourne that there had been multiple attempts to hack into transportation, telecommunications, water, and energy networks. Plus, a multibillion-dollar natural gas platform off the coast of Senegal promised to bring economic prosperity, but fishermen there say the development has caused disruption and unemployment.

Combatting climate change will likely require a multi-pronged approach to renewable energy generation. After all, it's not sunny or windy everywhere all the time. Geothermal energy, which harnesses the natural heat generated by the earth, can significantly shrink the carbon footprint of heating and cooling buildings. Those systems are currently just a small part of the HVAC market. But the Department of Energy wants to accelerate production by 10% a year. Rae Solomon at KUNC in Northern Colorado reports on how one geothermal project in the municipality of Hayden is progressing.

Throughout the season, we asked you all what questions you had about food, solutions and climate change, and you did not disappoint! In this episode, we find answers to your most pressing questions, like whether grass-fed beef is more nutritious than grain-fed, if cell-cultivated meat is considered an ultra-processed food, and we find out what’s going on with insect protein (of course, a taste test is involved). Plus some tips for reducing food waste.

Business owners aren’t too optimistic about the labor market, according to an NFIB survey. About a third are struggling to fill an open position, and around a quarter said labor quality was their most pressing issue. In this episode, we scrape together a picture of today’s labor market, sans government data. Plus: Cities issue bonds at a record pace, we explain the consequences of Trump’s proposal to back 50-year mortgages and one report shows real wage growth has slowed to 2%.

Every story has an economic angle. Want some in your inbox? Subscribe to our daily or weekly newsletter.

Marketplace is more than a radio show. Check out our original reporting and financial literacy content at marketplace.org — and consider making an investment in our future.

It’s Singles Day in China: a retail holiday that runs circles around Black Friday and Cyber Monday. By comparison, single Americans are an untapped market according to Peter McGraw, behavioral economist and host of the podcast “Solo: The Single Person’s Guide to a Remarkable Life.” But as the single population grows in the United States, will that change? We’ll get into it. Plus, the realities of the “singles tax.”

Here’s everything we talked about today:

• "Singles’ Day is a $150B holiday in China. Here’s why I think ‘11/11’ will catch on in the US" from The Conversation 
• "The rise of singlehood is reshaping the world" from The Economist
• "The rise of the ‘solo economy’ is driving new consumption patterns" from Futures Platform 
• "The ‘singles tax’ means you often pay more for going it alone. Here’s how it works" from The Conversation 

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