Author: Reporter

Jason LaCroix felt privileged to work from home, especially as a father to two young children. He needed flexibility when his son, then 6, suffered a brain injury and spent 35 days in intensive care. LaCroix, a senior systems engineer based in Atlanta, took time off and then worked from home while managing his son’s care and appointments. But LaCroix was laid off last February from that job, where he had been working remotely for five years. His new role requires him to spend four days a week in a company office and commute for three hours a day....

Although women who lost or left their jobs at the height of the crisis have largely returned to the workforce, a recent finding points to the price many paid for stepping back. In 2023, the gender wage gap between men and women working full-time widened year-over-year for the first time in 20 years, according to an annual report from the U.S. Census Bureau. Economists trying to make sense of the data say it captures a complicated moment during the disjointed post-pandemic labor market recovery when many women finally returned to work full-time, especially in hard-hit low-wage industries where they...

At Sunshine Adult Day Center, every morning starts with a parade around the room. Today, the theme is multicultural, and the flag bearers have no shortage of countries: Philippines, India, Haiti, Mexico, United States. Most of them older adults, attendees dance through the room, waving streamers and banging drums as Pitbull’s “I Know You Want Me” blasts. Proudly representing her home country of Nigeria, Charity Wogwugwu, 87, is dressed to the nines in a pistachio green skirt embroidered with red and gold flowers, a lemon yellow floral top with puffed sleeves and a pleated gold headwrap. “They pay attention...

Gaza has long been a powder keg, and it exploded after Hamas fighters stormed southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and began killing and abducting people, sparking a crushing Israeli military operation that’s only recently stopped under a tenuous ceasefire. Convicted felon and U.S. President Donald Trump’s suggestion on February 4 that displaced Palestinians in Gaza be permanently resettled outside the war-torn territory and the U.S. take “ownership” of the land is triggering new tensions over the future of the enclave. While “owning” land is a term that appears to be more applicable to real estate than to territories,...