The bottom line

Finance sector regains lost ground

For the first time since the 2008 credit crisis, banks and other financial companies are close to regaining their position as the stock market’s biggest industry. The finance sector now makes up 16.8 percent of the S&P 500—double its share in 2009, and just behind the tech industry’s 17.6 percent.

Bloomberg.com

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

U.S. workweek shrinks

The average U.S. workweek has shrunk by nearly 12 percent since 1964, from more than 38 hours a week to fewer than 34 in 2013. The decline is largely due to the growth in part-time employment, spurred by the surge of women into the workforce and the proliferation of restaurants and retail establishments.

CNN.com

Compact digital cameras lose to smartphones

Sales of compact digital cameras have plummeted 42 percent in the first five months of this year, as smartphones become the clear preference for taking and sharing photos.

The Wall Street Journal

Job growth in July exceeds predictions

Businesses added 200,000 jobs in July, according to payroll firm ADP. That exceeded economists’ predictions of 180,000 additional jobs. Most of the new jobs were in small businesses and professional and business services. But manufacturers slashed 5,000 jobs thanks to a euro zone recession and federal budget cuts.

USA Today

Beware of bouncing a check

More than a million low-income Americans have been denied bank accounts by the nation’s largest institutions as a result of internal databases that track and blacklist customers who have “relatively small mistakes”—like bounced checks and overdrafts—on their record.

The New York Times