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Duarte Geraldino, Narrating: Good morning! It's Wednesday, March 30th. I'm Duarte Geraldino.
Shumita Basu, Narrating: And I'm Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
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Geraldino: You want to know how tight the U.S. labor market is? Consider the latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: 4.4 million Americans quit their jobs in February, employers hired about 6.7 million people, and the biggest number, there were 11.3 million jobs open.
Basu: We've been seeing recent jobs reports get reduced to headlines that say, "People are Quitting at Record Rates." You know, "the Great Resignation." But in "The Atlantic," Derek Thompson says a lot of people are misinterpreting the data. If you're taking this as a sign that Americans hate their jobs and they just want out, Thompson says, actually, the opposite is true.
Geraldino: Work is Thompson's beat, so he's been researching data around these narratives. And his conclusion is, they don't hold up. First, he looks at the notion that Americans don't want to work. When it comes to people in the prime of their working life, labor-force participation rates are currently higher than they were for most of the Obama years. And unemployment is under 4%. Lots of people are either working or actively looking for work.
Basu: He also finds plenty of data refuting the idea that people hate their jobs. Pollsters have been asking about this for decades. And recent numbers show about 84% of Americans are very satisfied or at least moderately satisfied with their jobs.
Geraldino: That's not the highest ever, but it is in line with the last 20 years, when the satisfaction number has always been above 80%. Not that many people actually hate their jobs. But those that do, they tend to be very loud about it, especially if you spend time in certain corners of social media. Thompson argues that a minority of online commenters are giving a skewed view.
Basu: People are quitting, but that's not the whole story. Those workers who leave are also getting new jobs, often better jobs, ones that pay more money. When Janet Yellen ran the Fed, she didn't just watch the hiring rate. She liked to talk about the quit rate too. To her, more people quitting was a sign that they felt good about their chances of finding a better job. In some cases, an increase in resignations can be a sign of a healthy labor market. In this "Atlantic" piece, Thompson doesn't even want to call what's happening "the Great Resignation." To him, it's more like "the Great Job Switch," where many workers could come out better off.
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Geraldino: High-stakes talks are happening between Ukraine and Russia. Despite Russia's pledge to reduce strikes on some areas during discussions, Ukrainian authorities say Russian forces continued attacking overnight. Previously, the Ukrainian government offered to adopt a neutral status if other countries guaranteed its security. This concept of neutrality, it's been a sticking point throughout the conflict. "Vox" takes a look at what it means in a diplomatic context.
Basu: As "Vox" explains, it helps to understand the agreements behind other so-called "neutral" countries in Europe. Switzerland is probably the best-known example. But Austria, Finland, Sweden and Ireland are also "neutral" or "nonaligned" countries. In broad terms, being neutral means exactly that. Staying out of conflict, not taking sides or joining military alliances and not allowing foreign bases on your territory.
Geraldino: We often think about neutrality in a modern Cold War context. This notion that a country avoided taking sides with the West or the Soviet Union. But for some countries, it goes even further back. The Swiss and Swedish have had versions of neutrality for centuries.
Basu: "Vox" spoke to foreign policy experts who say Austria might be the best example to understand here. After World War II, the Eastern and Western troops occupied the country, much like Germany. Austria declared neutrality in 1955 as a way of getting both the West and the Soviets out. But over time, it became part of the country's political identity. To this day, most Austrians don't want their country to join NATO. And it's managed to have good relations with East and West.
Geraldino: Ukrainian neutrality wouldn't be unprecedented. The country did have a neutral stance until 2014. But after Russia invaded Crimea, Ukraine changed its mind and said it would seek NATO membership. Neutrality would close the door on joining NATO, but membership is something Ukraine's leadership is already publicly accepting as unlikely. Whether neutral status can lead to a breakthrough that brings peace, well, that depends on the details. Negotiators would have to find a definition of neutrality that Ukraine and Russia can both live with.
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Basu: A warning, this next story references thoughts of suicide. When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan last year, around 1,400 unaccompanied Afghan kids were evacuated to the United States. Many have been placed with relatives or family friends. But dozens of these kids are still living in federal facilities run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the ORR. And recent reporting from "ProPublica" shows how these centers are struggling to address these children's needs.
Melissa Sanchez: So the children who remain in ORR custody basically fled war and they have come with a lot more trauma than the shelter system typically sees in the immigrant kids who come here.
Geraldino: That's Melissa Sanchez. She covers immigration for "ProPublica."
Sanchez: What's happened is there's what some folks have called, like, a mental health crisis in these facilities. Kids need a lot of help. They're suicidal, they're hurting others.
The agency says it's doing its best. And children's advocates acknowledge, the ORR is facing an unprecedented challenge. It wasn't prepared for the haphazard evacuation of tens of thousands of people from Afghanistan.
Sanchez: The facilities just aren't equipped to deal with them. A big part of it is culture and language. The facilities are set up to deal with Central American kids who come in, who speak Spanish for the most part. And there's like a major cultural and language gap at the facilities, so the kids are struggling even more as a result of that.
Basu: "ProPublica" reports many shelters didn't have the prayer rugs or halal meals that the kids needed. There often weren't interpreters who spoke their languages. Sanchez says that led some kids to distrust the workers, adding to an already difficult situation.
Sanchez: They feel this kind of survivor's guilt for being here and having their families be back there. We've heard that the Taliban has gone after some of the children's relatives. And so, children are really worried that their parents are gonna die. They ask for help sending money back home. They worry about how they can help get their families, like, passports to get out of the country. The level of anxiety and stress after these calls is really incredible, the workers tell us.
Geraldino: And there may be more challenges ahead for these refugees and others. The Biden administration says it will accept 100,000 Ukrainians who are fleeing war. If that includes children separated from parents, those minors might find themselves in a system that's not ready for another wave of kids needing help.
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Finally, whether you do your own taxes or hire someone to help, you've probably started to get questions like this recently: did you have anything to do with cryptocurrency in the past year? If the answer is yes, you have to buckle up for more questions and a more complicated tax return.
Basu: Yeah, and things get even wilder if you have gone further into the world of NFTs. Just a quick reminder, NFTs, non-fungible tokens. These are collectible digital assets often tied to art. NFTs are now a $44 billion market and the IRS is gonna want a share of that. "POLITICO" reports on how this is basically the first tax season NFTs have gone mainstream. And that's creating all kinds of new questions and paperwork for taxpayers.
Geraldino: Depending on the situation, an NFT transaction could be taxed as income, capital gains, collectibles or dividends. And which category it falls into can mean a very different tax bill. There's no concrete IRS guidance on NFTs and there might not be anytime soon. As one accountant describes it, figuring out what to do is "like grabbing smoke."
Basu: Now the pros warn, if you have been trading NFTs, you'll have to keep track of things carefully. Not just what you make selling NFTs, but also the transactions in your digital wallets when you buy them. And if you've done a lot in the crypto space, it might be a good idea to hire a professional to make sure you're getting it right.
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Geraldino: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
Basu: And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News+ partners.
Geraldino: We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
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