Black Americans have the same participation rate in the labor force, but are still twice as likely to be unemployed as white Americans, says the January jobs report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

Unemployment decreased for Black workers from 7.1% in December to 6.9% but is still double the 3.4% rate of white workers. The 2:1 ratio has persisted for more than 40 years and is seen in almost every state where Black workers make up a significant share of the workforce, according to Valerie Wilson and Jhacova Williams’s research.

Wilson and Williams also found that only Black workers with advanced degrees had unemployment rates below 4%, the national average. In contrast, with the exception of those with less than a high school diploma, white unemployment is below 4% at all levels of education. “The fact that the country’s most highly educated black workers are still less likely to be employed than their white counterparts … strongly suggests that racial discrimination remains a major failure of an otherwise tight labor market,” write Wilson and Williams.

The amount of plastic in the world’s oceans could triple by 2040, and quadruple by 2050, says a new report from the World Wildlife Fund. WWF also found that plastic negatively affects 88% of marine life and may also negatively affect humans once it enters the food chain as microplastics and nanoplastics.

The plastics industry has invested $180 billion into new factories since 2010. But by 2015, 60% of all plastic ever produced had already become waste, a significant part of which has ended up in the ocean. Half of all plastic waste was from packaging alone; while according to a 2018 estimate, single-use plastics account for 60-95% of marine pollution. 

“Once distributed in the ocean, plastic waste is almost impossible to retrieve,” said Heike Vesper, director of the Marine Programme, WWF Germany. “Targeting the causes of plastic pollution is far more effective than cleaning up afterwards.”

Some industries, like construction, are already increasing their use of recycled plastic. But research from Pew Trusts shows that companies also need to make significant efforts to replace plastic with paper or compostable alternatives. These existing solutions could cut annual flows of plastic into the ocean by about 80% in the next 20 years.

The price of food around the world rose to its highest point in a decade, states a new report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). 

The FAO Food Price Index measures the monthly change in international prices of the most globally traded food commodities, including vegetable oils, cereals, dairy, meat and sugar. In January, the Food Price Index stood at 135.7 points, the highest since April 2011. 

The rising prices are driven by supply-chain constraints, labor shortages and bad weather, says the FAO. It also warns that the higher prices will hurt low-income populations and countries that depend on imports. Food import prices are forecast to jump by 20% this year.

Some experts say the real price of food is the highest it’s been since the oil crisis of the 1970s. “Based on real prices, it is currently harder to buy food on the international market than in almost every other year since UN record keeping began in 1961,” said Alastair Smith, a senior teaching fellow in Global Sustainable Development at the University of Warwick.

Work is one of the most common sources of meaning for adults around the world, according to a Pew Research Center survey of nearly 19,000 people in 17 countries. The survey asked people what makes life meaningful, and “jobs” landed as one of the top three sources of meaning for most people.

Responses vary greatly by country, however, Italians are most likely to say they find meaning through their career (43%), while South Koreans are least likely to cite their job as a source of happiness (6%). Americans were also less likely to say that their career was a source of meaning (17%). 

Many emphasized the importance of having their basic financial needs met to lead a meaningful life. In nine of the 17 countries surveyed, material well-being is one of the top three factors people cited. Wealthier and more educated adults are also more likely to mention finding meaning in their work. In many cases, higher earners are twice as likely as lower earners to mention their jobs as sources of meaning.

Remittances continue to be an important form of financing in Africa. Despite early warnings of a decrease in remittances during the COVID-19 pandemic, non-commercial transfers provided a valuable source of economic stimulus to most of the region during a time when other types of capital were leaving.

According to The Brookings Institution’s 2022 Foresight Africa report, cryptocurrencies have great potential to improve remittance payment systems. While international wire transfer fees cost an average of 7% of the total amount sent and could take several days to clear, some cryptocurrencies support foreign exchange and money transfers for less than a U.S. penny and process payments in seconds. Cryptocurrency transfers associated with remittance payments have experienced rapid growth, both in terms of value and volume, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Because cryptocurrency platforms bypass traditional banking services by introducing decentralized peer-to-peer lending services, they can help level the economic playing field and are well-positioned to address a number of economic challenges in the region. A recent report by Chainalysis, a blockchain data platform, found that between July 2020 and June 2021, Africans received $105.6 billion worth of cryptocurrency payments — an increase of 1,200% from the year before. Of the $48 billion remitted to sub-Saharan Africa in 2019, Chainalysis estimates that up to $562 million worth of remittance payments were facilitated by cryptocurrencies.