Alana Semuels

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Time • 12th November 2021

The Great American Trucker Shortage Isn't Real

Stop saying there's a driver shortage. It only makes conditions worse for drivers.
Time • 17th August 2021

Why Is Everything More Expensive Right Now?

I track a stuffed giraffe from the factory to my doorstep to explain supply chain bottlenecks and the roots of inflation.
Time • 2nd November 2021

How American Shoppers Broke the Supply Chain

America has long been gobbling up more goods from overseas than we send back, but in the past year, spending has gone bonkers.
Time • 8th October 2021

U.S. Workers Are Realizing It's the Perfect Time to Go on Strike

Thousands of workers have gone on strike across the country, showing their growing power in a tightening economy.
The Atlantic • 1st December 2017

The Never-Ending Foreclosure

How can the country survive the next economic crash if millions of families still haven't recovered from the last one?
The Atlantic • 11th July 2016

The Near Impossibility of Moving Up After Welfare

In the wake of welfare reform, unemployed people are pushed to quickly find work, any work. But too often those jobs lead nowhere.
The Atlantic • 30th January 2017

America’s Great Divergence

A growing earnings gap between those with a college education and those without is creating economic and cultural rifts throughout the country.
The Atlantic • 28th February 2018

This Is What Life Without Retirement Savings Looks Like

Many seniors are stuck with lives of never-ending work—a fate that could befall millions in the coming decades.
The Atlantic • 5th March 2019

Is This the End of Recycling?

Americans are consuming more and more stuff. Now that other countries won’t take our papers and plastics, they’re ending up in the trash.
The Atlantic • 18th November 2016

Can America’s Companies Survive America’s Most Aggressive Investors?

So-called activist investors are increasingly gaining control of legacy corporations, forcing them to trim payrolls and downsize research operations—and, quite possibly, damaging the entire economy.
The Atlantic • 21st August 2018

‘We Are All Accumulating Mountains of Things’

How online shopping and cheap prices are turning Americans into hoarders
The Atlantic • 23rd September 2016

The Epicenter of American Inequality

In Greenwich, Darien, and New Canaan, Connecticut, bankers are earning astonishing amounts of money. Does that have anything to do with the poverty in Bridgeport, just a few exits away?
The Atlantic • 4th April 2017

Why It’s So Hard to Get Ahead in the South

In Charlotte and other Southern cities, poor children have the lowest odds of making it to the top income bracket of kids anywhere in the country. Why?
The Atlantic • 25th August 2016

Good School, Rich School; Bad School, Poor School

The inequality at the heart of America’s education system
The Atlantic • 28th March 2018

Chicago’s Awful Divide

Americans are flocking to big cities to find good jobs—opportunities that remain disproportionately out of reach for the poorest residents already living there.
The Atlantic • 18th August 2015

The Town That Decided to Send All Its Kids to College

Residents of Baldwin, Michigan, pooled together their money to provide scholarships for everyone, and it changed the town profoundly.
The Atlantic • 31st August 2018

The Online Gig Economy’s ‘Race to the Bottom’

When the whole world is fighting for the same jobs, what happens to workers?
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