Women in the Workforce, Renting in Detroit, a Strange Podcast, and More

Find out how many women left the workforce in 2020. Plus, the price of renting in Detroit, a podcast on all things strange in our area, and more.
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Get stats on women in the workforce after the COVID-19 pandemic, along with details on how affordable renting in Detroit is. Plus, a macabre podcast that deals in all things strange in southeast Michigan.

Detroit Digits

136,000 The number of Michigan women who left the labor force in 2020, according to a census data analysis by the Detroit Data Center.

This amounts to a 5.8 percent decrease in women workers, which has been attributed largely to lack of child care during pandemic-imposed school shutdowns. In the same year, the number of Michigan men in the workforce increased by 18,000, or 0.7 percent.

12 million The amount of Paxlovid courses Pfizer has dispersed across 37 countries to date. This includes 5 million courses of the oral COVID-19 treatment distributed within the U.S.

The pharmaceutical company has developed a total of nearly 17 million treatment courses thus far, and it’s not slowing down. In fact, it plans to establish another production facility in Kalamazoo to keep up with global demand.

6th Detroit’s rank among the U.S.’s least affordable big cities for single renters, according to an index by Rent Hop. Researchers from the apartment listings platform cross- referenced around 1.2 million studio postings from 2020 and 2021 with Census Bureau income data.

The results place median rent for a studio in Detroit at $880 — 29.7 percent of the average Detroiter’s $35,555 salary. But things may be looking up. The study also found that year-over-year, the portion of Detroiters’ incomes consumed by rent fell by 2.76 percent.

Listen here

Name: Detroit Strange

Who: Jessica Cooper and Alex Suriano, local comics and performers with a yen for a good yarn.

What’s good about it: The duo take turns digging up really old tales of murder, mayhem, and curiosity from across the region and regaling each other — and the audience — with the fascinating, twisty details. But they also have a drink, catch up, and chitchat about their lives in an engaging manner before they launch into the episode’s focus.

Whether it’s the origins of Detroit-style pizza or the Detroit doctor who performed 36 hysterectomies without a medical license, the stories themselves are told in a thorough, entertaining, and illuminating manner.

Starter episodes: “The Year Was 1985” parts 1 and 2 (April 27/May 5, 2021), which go deep into the disappearance and death of psychologist Alan Canty so well that his widow,
Jan Canty, wrote on their Facebook page: “Thank you for your accurate account of my husband’s murder many years ago on your podcast.”

Website: planetantpodcasts.com/detroit-strange


This story is from the October 2022 issue of Hour Detroit magazine. Read more in our digital edition.