Hopefully most of you are beating the heat and the rain this summer. Hard not to correlate a changing climate with all the unusual hot weather and flooding we’re seeing (shameless plug for Molly Wood’s ongoing climate series, “How We Survive”).

But in all seriousness, fingers crossed you’ve all had a little bit of summer fun. This is what we’ve been working on at Marketplace:

Bringing “Marketplace Minute” to public media audiences
As we announced a couple weeks ago, we’re making “Marketplace Minute” available to you and your audiences. Twice daily, this one-minute module brings important economic content and context to audiences in Marketplace’s signature accessible style. Marketplace reporters will write and produce the one-minute segments, with key voices including Nova Safo, Nancy Marshall-Genzer, Meghan McCarty Carino and Justin Ho.

“Marketplace Minute” will be available at no extra cost to current Marketplace affiliates and will be available starting Aug. 16. More information will be available closer to the launch date, but in the meantime if you have any questions, do not hesitate to reach out to your station relations representative.

This thing we used to call employment…
What happened to the good American job? The kind where you work for one company for years and get things like health insurance, paid sick days and at least minimum wage. Today, a growing number of companies argue that they’ve come up with something new and better: a gig economy where workers are independent contractors who own their own businesses and get more flexibility, but don’t get the traditional protections that come with being an employee.

In this one-hour special from Marketplace, the team from “The Uncertain Hour” explores the long history and controversial future of the gig economy by turning to a decidedly low-tech example: janitorial companies that rely on an army of independent contractors. We dive in to the story of one of these janitors, a man named Jerry Vazquez.

Like many Americans, Jerry always dreamed of working for himself. So when he saw a notice in the PennySaver saying he could start his own business for $950 down, he decided to go all in. He bought a janitorial franchise with a company called Jan-Pro. But he says Jan-Pro set his rates, directed his work, made him wear a uniform and set his schedule. Soon, Jerry began feeling like he didn’t have much control over a business that he supposedly owned — and he was earning less than minimum wage doing a dirty job. Eventually, Jerry decided it was time to fight back. He and some of his fellow Jan-Pro franchisees — most immigrants or people of color — sued the company.

“The Uncertain Hour” will go deep into the long and strange battle over who deserves worker protections and who is excluded — a struggle that connects to power, race and important questions about what companies owe the people whose labor they rely on.

This station special will be available from Aug. 25 to Oct. 31. Subscribe on Content Depot now.

“One final note on the way out”
Nicole Childers, who was the executive producer of “Marketplace Morning Report,” has moved on to a very exciting role at NBC. Meredith Garretson will be the interim senior producer for the show; she has been with the team for about two years. As usual, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your station representatives!

Thank you,
Marketplace leadership