Booming
Booming
Booming is a weekly podcast about the economic forces shaping our lives here in the Pacific Northwest. The Seattle area's been home to many booms over the years. It’s brought jobs, people, and wealth to the region, but also real growing pains that people here feel every day. In Booming, KUOW economy reporters Joshua McNichols and Monica Nickelsburg help listeners make sense of our ever-changing ec…Follow the podcast:
Grocery sticker shock and the rise of the dollar-store dinner
If you have sticker shock at the grocery store, you’re not alone. In Seattle, the cost of groceries is about 30% higher today than before the pandemic. Those high prices are straining family budgets and causing many people to change how they shop. Today, creative hacks for putting food on the ta…
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Could the hottest real estate market become... driveways?
Twenty years ago, buying a house in Seattle felt like a stretch. Today, it feels like you need to win the lottery. Homeownership is slipping out of reach for a lot of people, especially those with modest incomes. But there’s a movement underway in Washington State -- one that could bring housin…
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The great data center space race
Data centers needed more space, so they literally moved there. This week, Elon Musk announced he has merged his rocket company, Space X – with his AI company, xAI. The reason? He wants to build AI data centers in space. But his company is not the only one that wants to take the cloud... off the…
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16,000 Amazon employees just lost their jobs. Are we in a tech recession?
This week, Amazon announced it's laying off 16,000 employees. It’s part two of a continued downsizing Amazon started in October, when it laid of 14,000 employees. Taken together, this is Amazon’s biggest reduction in force ever. This week's layoffs are also the latest in a series of tech downsizi…
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Lessons from the state that made child care free
The cost of child care is at an all-time high. The typical American family with young kids now spends more on child care than housing. In most of the developed world, the government pays for child care so parents can work and contribute to the economy. But free, universal child care is nearly unhe…
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How a bad bet built the internet: a short history of bubbles
According to a Harvard economist, spending on data centers and artificial intelligence accounted for 92% of U.S. economic growth in the first half of last year. That's fueled speculation that we’re in an AI bubble, because spending on that level doesn’t feel sustainable. If the bubble pops and …
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Housing costs dropped in Austin. How they did the impossible
Austin, Texas is not a cheap place. But for the last few years, it’s been a real outlier. While many cities saw rent go up, Austin’s average rent actually fell. A lot. On today's episode, what is Austin doing right? And what could Seattle learn from it? GUEST: Audrey McGlinchy, Housing reporter…
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Sports ticket prices have skyrocketed. Here's why (encore)
Happy New Year! The Booming team is taking a week to rest and recharge before the new year begins...we’ve got lots of new episodes up our sleeve that we’re excited to share with you. In the meantime, we wanted to revisit some of our favorite episodes. This one is about the rising costs of Seattl…
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How stores are spying on you (encore)
The Booming team is hard at work on some new episodes coming out next year. In the meantime, we wanted to revisit some of our favorite stories this holiday season. We think this one will be particularly useful for those of you still doing some last-minute holiday shopping. It explores the ways AI …
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How does Seattle's cost of living stack up to other cities?
We all know the cost of living is really high in Seattle. Whether it's housing or groceries, this town is a tough place to make ends meet. But just how expensive is Seattle compared to other cities? On today's episode, Monica talked to a researcher who sends armies of shoppers to find out. And w…
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