Tuesday's Assorted Links
Jobs in NYC, Home Depot prices, reading for pleasure, book taxes, and online grocery shopping
Hi y’all! Here are five stories from this week that contained some neat applications of economic principles or are related to teaching:
New York City added fewer than 1,000 private sector jobs during the first half of the year, the slowest growth in the labor market outside a recession and the pandemic since 2003 [The New York Times]
Home Depot says it will raise some prices because of tariffs [CNN]
Reading for pleasure among Americans has declined by 40% over the past two decades [The New York Times]
Denmark will end its 25% value-added tax on books in an effort to get more people to read [The Guardian]
Grocery purchases on Amazon have more than doubled in 10 years [Sherwood News]
The real battle for productivity isn’t just against time; it’s against attention itself. We’re constantly being pulled in a million directions. The new app Focus Friend combines behavioral economics concepts with low-friction adoption to help users stay focused. The result? A quirky timer app featuring a knitting bean that’s climbed to the top of the App Store and might be the focus tool your students (or you) didn’t know you needed.
Why a Knitting Bean Might Help You Focus This Fall
Students are back in classrooms, trying to keep up with the early wave of introductory assignments. Parents are juggling school schedules packed with practices, homework, and travel. And the rest of us? We’re realizing how much time we’ve spent scrolling on our phones while th…
Are you an educator looking for ways to introduce this week’s newsletter into your classroom? Sign up for the Classroom Edition of Monday Morning Economist to get assessments and lesson plans delivered straight to your inbox every week.
As a life long reader I am always surprised and troubled by the reading trends. Especially since the books that are coming out has never been better in my opinion. So many new voices