NASA's Boeing Starliner has returned from space after hiccups with a three-month flight test, but its crew will continue its work until next year.
Why it matters: NASA and Boeing found "helium leaks and experienced issues with the spacecraft's reaction control thrusters," the day after astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams launched on June 5 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, NASA says in a news release.
Why it matters: Retailers fearing a November slowdown are expected to offer up deals long before most Americans vote in the middle of a make-or-break holiday shopping season.
Two Americans in a U.S. Open semifinalmakes for a hot ticket.
The big picture: A lot has already been made this year about the big crowds at this year's annual Grand Slam event in New York.
And tonight there's an added attraction — Frances Tiafoe and Taylor Fritz will face off to become the first American man in the tournament's title match in 18 years.
Follow the money: As of late this morning, there were 442 tickets available on StubHub for the 7pm ET match.
The cheapest one offered was for $224, but only 39 of the more than 400 available were to be had for under $300.
180 tickets were listed at over $1,000. (Someone was offering a ticket in section 54 for $16,195.)
The great American job creation machine began creaking more slowly this summer, and a response from the Federal Reserve is near — though the scale of that response remains in question.
Why it matters: That's the takeaway from a much-anticipated August jobs report out on Friday, which showed job creation slowing down even as the unemployment rate remained relatively low.
Salesforce has agreed to buy Own Co., a New Jersey-based provider of data protection and management solutions, for $1.9 billion in cash.
Why it matters: This is Salesforce's largest acquisition since buying Slack in 2021, and may signal the company's return to large dealmaking after disbanding its M&A committee last year.
The U.S. economy added 142,000 jobs in August, while the unemployment rate edged slightly lower to 4.2% from 4.3%, the Labor Department said on Friday.
Why it matters: A slowing labor market is a pivotal factor that will help the Federal Reserve determine the size of a highly anticipated interest rate cut later this month.
It's not just the U.S. — real estate is becoming increasingly unaffordable across most wealthy countries, as the Financial Times recently reported.
Why it matters: High and rising housing costs mean people have less money to spend on other things, and make it harder for folks to move. At the extreme end, a lack of affordable homes pushes more people into homelessness.
State of play: The share of people in OECD countries who say they're satisfied with the availability of good, affordable housing fell to 45% in 2023 from 51% in 2019, according to the Gallup World Poll, an annual survey.
In these countries people are less satisfied with housing than they are with things like health care or education.
Zoom in: The numbers were particularly bleak in the U.S., where high mortgage rates have put buying a home out of reach for many. Just 39% of respondents said they were satisfied with housing affordability, compared to 59% in 2019.
It's worse in Canada, where just 30% of respondents are satisfied with home affordability.
The big picture: This is a story about higher mortgage rates putting homes out of reach — they pretty much rose across all these countries — and about lack of home construction.
Home building in the U.S. never really bounced back from the financial crisis housing bust, as Conor Dougherty recently wrote in the New York Times.
It's not just a U.S. thing. "Basically we haven't built enough," Willem Adema, a senior economist in the social policy division of the OECD, tells the FT.
