The Best Business Reads of February

The month’s most interesting stories about money and economics from around the web

At the end of every month, editors of The Atlantic’s Business Channel put together a list of the most insightful and interesting pieces of journalism about money and economics from around the web.

This month’s picks include a broad investigation about work and labor—why some groups disproportionately fill certain jobs and why some can’t seem to find jobs at all—an investigation of Bernie Madoff, and a look at the dangers of expanding the U.S. Navy.

If you’ve missed previous roundups, you can find recent ones here and here.

Because of where the structurally unemployed live, what they’ve done, or the skills they lack, employers can’t or won’t hire them. The problems that keep today's jobless stuck on the sidelines are different than those of past recoveries: a complex web of often interrelated issues from disability and drug use to criminal records.

Behind the statistics are people with 20 million unique stories. Here are five.

We thought we knew the story of Bernie Madoff. How he masterminded the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, leaving behind scores of distraught investors and a $65 billion black hole.

But we had never heard the story from Madoff himself.

Was he a puppetmaster or a puppet? And if the latter, who else is to blame for the biggest financial fraud in history?

I watched my aunts and uncles work 16-hour days, only to charge cut-rate prices for their food. And I also witnessed the grueling hours that their employees put in, also at cut-rate wages. It is a cruel reality that immigrant enterprise is powered by the cheap labor of fellow immigrants.

Restaurant workers are already among the lowest paid workers in America. Many full-time workers rely on public assistance to make ends meet. Often enough, restaurant workers could not afford to eat at the restaurants where they work. And at the bottom of this system are the employees of the restaurants on these cheap eats lists.