By The Numbers

Deliver thy neighbor’s Amazon order

Tony Wagner Jun 18, 2015
3.5 million

That’s how many packages Amazon ships every day, and shipping costs grew by almost a third last year. It makes sense that the company is looking at new ways to ship, and sources tell the Wall Street Journal that Amazon is planning its own sort of TaskRabbit or Postmates service, asking customers to deliver packages from retail stores to each other.

$80 billion

That’s what power outages cost the U.S. in lost work. Like a lot of American infrastructure, the electrical grid is a marvel, but it’s showing its age. It’s susceptible to outages from severe weather, and those outages last longer than they do in other countries.

$14.75

That’s how low Etsy’s share price has hit since its IPO in April, falling by more than half. With the company now a decade old and in precarious new territory, we sat down with CEO Chad Dickerson to check in.

5.5 years

That’s how many year’s worth of wages it would take U.S. service workers to afford a home, on average— more than double the recommended 2.6 years. That’s according to a new analysis from the Martin Prosperity Institute as reported by CityLab. In parts of Silicon Valley, it would take them up to 20 years to afford a home. In all, the report only found two metropolitan areas were homes were within reach of service workers: Anderson, Indiana, and Saginaw, Michigan.

1789

The year Alexander Hamilton become the country’s first Treasury secretary at 34, creating America’s first central bank, tax system and so on from scratch. That comes from Hamilton biographer Ron Chernow, who’s Politico op-ed says making Hamilton share the $10 bill with a woman instead of replacing Andrew Jackson on the $20 would be “correct[ing] one historic injustice by committing another.”

There’s a lot happening in the world.  Through it all, Marketplace is here for you. 

You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible. 

Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.