Axios

Facebook parent company Meta invested $40 million earlier this year in Japanese mobile gaming company Playco, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: Facebook's user base shrunk (a tiny bit) for the first time ever last quarter, but Meta's apps remain some of the largest social networks on the internet. That's meaningful to a company like Playco, which wants to be on as many popular platforms as possible.

Executives are facing a big surprise as they call employees back. Companies and workers are living in two different realities when it comes to returning to the office.

What's happening: Much-delayed return-to-work dates are back as America moves past Omicron.

2022 is shaping up to be one of the hardest years ever to run a company — even harder than 2020, when the pandemic first hit, corporate leaders and analysts tell us.

Why it matters: Uncertainty, CEOs' dreaded nemesis, abounds. Supply chain snarls, lingering COVID disruptions, labor shortages, inflation, rising pay and soaring demands for new benefits and work flexibility are driving up costs and complexity.

“Future expectations” used to be a tough economic concept for students to grok, said Morgan Taylor, an economics professor at University of Georgia in Athens. It was hard to grasp a situation in which, say, you would expect a shortage of something, and that would change your demand for a good.

Then came the great toilet paper rush of 2020. We all hoarded TP, expecting supply to run out. These days, students get the idea pretty easily.

To get inflation under control, auto assembly lines have to run full-throttle. And despite some positive data points, things still seem to be sputtering.

Driving the news: On the plus side, inventories of cars and parts surged 6.9% in December — the biggest jump on record — following a couple of months of revving car production, the Census Bureau reported Wednesday.

For decades, politicians have talked about the U.S. achieving energy independence, a seemingly elusive goal of producing enough fuels to avoid relying on the rest of the world to fill up gas tanks and keep electricity flowing.

The intrigue: It's elusive no more. The U.S. produced more petroleum than it consumed in 2020, and the numbers were essentially in balance in 2021, according to the Energy Information Administration.

On the rare occasion they’re greenlit, TV shows by and about Latinos have an unusually short lifespan.

The big picture: Latinos are avid TV, streaming and film consumers but are rarely featured on screen or behind the scenes. Over the last couple of years, Latino-led shows that garnered rave reviews and had loyal followings have been canceled quickly, leaving fans and advocates for Latino representation discouraged.

There's a gender gap in the Great Resignation, with women quitting their jobs at higher rates than men.

Between the lines: That gender gap is widest in the states with the most child care disruptions, according to a new report from the payroll company Gusto.