What we’re reading (10/5)
“U.S. Job Creation Roared Higher In September As Payrolls Surged By 254,000” (CNBC). “The U.S. economy added far more jobs than expected in September, pointing to a vital employment picture as the unemployment rate edged lower, the Labor Department reported Friday. Nonfarm payrolls surged by 254,000 for the month, up from a revised 159,000 in August and better than the 150,000 Dow Jones consensus forecast. The unemployment rate fell to 4.1%, down 0.1 percentage point.”
“Rock-Star Law Firms Are Billing Up To $2,500 Per Hour. Clients Are Indignant.” (Wall Street Journal). “Lawyers’ pay is skyrocketing. Brutal poaching wars for talent are now common, and top lawyers expect to be paid like investment bankers and private-equity principals. ‘You don’t negotiate with those guys. You aren’t going to bet the company,’ said Matthew Lepore, general counsel for chemical giant BASF. ‘Clients aren’t doing as well as the law firms are doing, and it’s not sustainable.’”
“Everyone Is Getting The Dockworkers Strike All Wrong” (Slate). “[T]o focus this story on just the so-far-hypothetical economic and political repercussions is to overlook what’s really at the heart of the ILA fight. Yes, it’s a story about modern-day labor anxieties and union leverage—but it’s also about something far more complex than your typical workers-vs.-bosses toss-up.”
“Why Is The Speed Of Light So Fast? (Part 1)” (Of Particular Significance). “It’s true that the speed of light does seem fast — light can travel from your cell phone to your eyes in a billionth of a second, and in a full second and a half it can travel from the Earth to the Moon. And indeed the energy stored in your body is comparable to the Earth’s most explosive volcanic eruptions and to the most violent nuclear bombs ever tested — enormously greater than the energy you use to walk across the room or even to lift a heavy suitcase. What in the name of physics — and chemistry and biology — is responsible for these bewildering features of reality?”
“The Nobel-, Emmy-Winning Genius Who Became Google’s Star Antitrust Witness” (Semafor). “During the Google antitrust trial, Milgrom picked apart the government’s assertions that the company had abused its power, essentially arguing that the prosecution had misinterpreted changes Google made to its advertising auctions over the course of many years. Rather than anticompetitive, Milgrom argued, they were the right choices at the time, given the current technology, to avoid abuse of the system.”
