Each season, we explain the weird, complicated and often unequal American economy — and why some people get ahead and some get left behind. Host Krissy Clark dives into obscure policies and forgotten histories to explain why America is like it is. The latest season examines the “welfare-to-work industrial complex” and the multi-million dollar companies running today’s for-profit welfare centers.
Latest episodes
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23 min
Integration Generation (bonus episode from “Unlocking the Gates”)
In a new collaboration between Marketplace and APM Studios called “Unlocking the Gates,” host Lee Hawkins investigates how a secret nighttime business deal unlocked the gates of a…
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33 min
The $80 Million Acre (from “How We Survive”)
This week, we’re dropping into your feeds to tell you about another podcast we make here at Marketplace that we think Uncertain Hour listeners will like. It’s called “How We Surviv…
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55 min
Chapter 6: The Welfare to Temp Work Pipeline
Since the 1990s, most cash welfare recipients have been required to get a job or do mandated “work activities” to receive their monthly check. These requirements are intended to he…
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49 min
Chapter 5: Profits and Perverse Incentives
Antoine Dukes is a natural born salesman. And when he started working for a for-profit welfare company, he figured it was a good way to put his skills to work helping needy America…
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36 min
Chapter 4: The Battle of Newburgh
In 1961, city officials in Newburgh, New York, declared war on their poorest residents by proclaiming, without evidence, that the city was overrun by welfare cheats. It was a momen…
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36 min
Chapter 3: Race and rumor
In the 1950s, a rumor that people were moving to Newburgh, NY to live off welfare riled up the city. When city leaders essentially declare war on welfare — and the people who get i…
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54 min
Chapter 2: The compliance machine
A single mother of two in Chicago was working and taking classes to become an addiction counselor when her life fell apart. The father of her youngest child assaulted her so badly…
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45 min
Chapter 1: The dream
When a struggling mother of two in Milwaukee hits hard times, she turns to a local welfare office for help — a welfare office outsourced to a private, for-profit company. Inside, s…
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4 min
Season 6: The Welfare-to-Work Industrial Complex
There is a growing chorus of politicians who argue that there’s a simple solution to help all kinds of problems, including poverty, labor shortages and government deficits: putting…
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41 min
25 years after welfare reform, let’s revisit “the magic bureaucrat”
It’s been 25 years since our country upended its welfare system – and so we’re looking back at our very first episode.We spent that first season of “The Uncertain Hour” reflecting…
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46 min
My boss is an app
The gig-app workforce has arrived at our doorstep. But Silicon Valley’s innovations in hiring are only the latest round of this long-running battle over what employment means in th…
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44 min
Inside baseball
In minor league baseball, professional athletes train, suit up and play for wages that would be illegal in most sectors. Players live in crowded apartments, sleep on air mattresses…
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33 min
Big Boss, Little Boss
After Jimmy Nicks’ job was subcontracted, he took both companies to court — the subcontractor he worked for and its client, Koch Foods. The “little boss” and the “big boss.” His ca…
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37 min
To catch a chicken
When chicken catcher Jimmy Nicks’ job was subcontracted, virtually overnight, he started doing the same job for a new boss — only without the pay, protections and benefits he’d com…
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39 min
The liquid workforce
Over a quarter of the world’s largest employers don’t just make or sell products — they also rent out workers. Let’s talk about how we got here.For even more of “The Uncertain Hour…
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48 min
“To suffer or permit to work”
This week we’re finally going to tell you what happened to Jerry Vazquez — and how his story relates to the 1930s case of a hotel chambermaid. Jerry and some of his fellow Jan-Pro…
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45 min
Who’s the boss?
Jerry Vazquez was in the cleaning business now, and his clients liked him. They’d leave him notes, some with smiley faces drawn in. But, he says, he was barely getting by on the ra…
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42 min
Congratulations! You’re an entrepreneur now
Jerry Vazquez always dreamed of working for himself. So when he saw a notice in the PennySaver advertising janitorial franchises, he decided to go all in. Pretty soon after, he was…
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4 min
‘The Uncertain Hour’ is back!
Employment as we know it is changing. The kinds of jobs where one person works for one employer for years — with health insurance, sick days, paid vacation and a retirement fund —…
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28 min
Answering your “History of Now” questions
We’ve spent the past five weeks trying to make sense of this moment, where the inequalities of our society have been suddenly set in high relief. In that time, you all have written…