For struggling homeowners in the pandemic’s first year, there was hope early on that these hard times would not put people with mortgages out in the street.

Thanks to quick governmental action, homeowners quickly got word that most of them could put off monthly payments for as much as 18 months — and even have the option to make them up as much as 40 years later.

Renters weren’t so lucky.

Sure, there were federal and regional eviction moratoriums, but it took nearly a year for Congress to come through with actual payment assistance, and that has only trickled out so far. Plus, it came with a host of restrictions and hurdles to clear — heaped on top of a population where millions were already in a precarious financial position.

We should say it out loud: When it comes to public policy, people who do not own their own homes are treated like second-class citizens.

America is getting back to work.

That’s the simplest, clearest analysis of the labor market that emerges from nearly every line of the July employment numbers released Friday morning. It is a welcome sign that, as of the middle of last month, the economy is healing rapidly — and that the previous couple of months reflected healthier results than previously estimated.

There are caveats worth mentioning: The surveys on which this data is based were taken before people were worrying very much about the Delta variant of the coronavirus; the share of Americans participating in the work force hasn’t really budged; and we still haven’t achieved the kind of one-million-plus monthly job gains that seemed plausible back in the spring.

But the overall picture is not a particularly nuanced one. The job market is getting better, and the economy is healing.

The 943,000 jobs added to employers’ payrolls in July is impressive on its own (though with an asterisk...

Anne Smedinghoff, a Foreign Service officer at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, was escorting Afghan journalists on an outing when a roadside bomb killed her in 2013. The bomb’s design relied on fertilizer made in Pakistan, at two factories that regularly supplied a nearby Taliban bomb-making operation — a fact that U.S. authorities had publicized.

The factories, Fatima Fertilizer and Pakarab Fertilizers, were not fly-by-night organizations. Both did business in U.S. dollars through accounts at the London-based bank Standard Chartered.

Now Ms. Smedinghoff’s family and a group of nearly 500 others — including soldiers and civilians who were severely wounded in Afghanistan and their families, along with the families of victims who were killed — are accusing some of the world’s largest banks of helping terrorists carry out their attacks. Among the defendants are Deutsche Bank, Standard Chartered and Danske Bank.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit, filed on Thursday in federal...

For struggling homeowners in the pandemic’s first year, there was hope early on that these hard times would not put people with mortgages out in the street.

Thanks to quick governmental action, homeowners quickly got word that most of them could put off monthly payments for as much as 18 months — and even have the option to make them up as much as 40 years later.

Renters weren’t so lucky.

Sure, there were federal and regional eviction moratoriums, but it took nearly a year for Congress to come through with actual payment assistance, and that has only trickled out so far. Plus, it came with a host of restrictions and hurdles to clear — heaped on top of a population where millions were already in a precarious financial position.

We should say it out loud: When it comes to public policy, people who do not own their own homes are treated like second-class citizens.

Federal Reserve officials are trying to decide what comes next for monetary policy, and Friday’s jobs report gave them a positive sign that the economy is moving toward their goals.

The July employment report — which showed that the country added 943,000 jobs as wages rose and more people in their prime working years joined the labor market — is likely to increase the central bank’s confidence that the economy is swiftly healing.

This week, our team talked to a lot of hesitant people. We heard from those who were skeptical of getting vaccinated about their decision making this morning. And for Tuesday’s episode, we spoke with both employers and prospective employees across the country to get a better sense of why so many Americans are reluctant to return to work.

Both are extremely personal decisions with significant social ramifications. So in this newsletter, we wanted to take a closer look at the latter — digging into the context and proposed solutions for America’s labor shortage. Then, we take a look behind the scenes at how our team is thinking about covering recent news related to race and identity.

This week, our team talked to a lot of hesitant people. We heard from those who were skeptical of getting vaccinated about their decision making this morning. And for Tuesday’s episode, we spoke with both employers and prospective employees across the country to get a better sense of why so many Americans are reluctant to return to work.

Both are extremely personal decisions with significant social ramifications. So in this newsletter, we wanted to take a closer look at the latter — digging into the context and proposed solutions for America’s labor shortage. Then, we take a look behind the scenes at how our team is thinking about covering recent news related to race and identity.

If you were hoping to buy a ticket to space on one of Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space planes, you’ll probably wish you bought one seven years ago.

On Thursday, Virgin Galactic announced that it was resuming sales of tickets on its flights, which rise above 50 miles and offer about four minutes of free fall and a view of Earth against the darkness of space.

The price: at least $450,000 per seat.

That’s some $200,000 more than what the company was charging in 2014 before it suspended sales after the crash of its first space plane, V.S.S. Enterprise, during a test flight. About 600 people have tickets from the earlier round of sales.

And if you haven’t already put down a $1,000 refundable deposit, you’ll have to wait even longer. Virgin Galactic will first make tickets available to the 1,000 people who were able to reserve a spot on the waiting list for when ticket sales resumed.

If you were hoping to buy a ticket to space on one of Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space planes, you’ll probably wish you bought one seven years ago.

On Thursday, Virgin Galactic announced that it was resuming sales of tickets on its flights, which rise above 50 miles and offer about four minutes of free fall and a view of Earth against the darkness of space.

The price: at least $450,000 per seat.

That’s some $200,000 more than what the company was charging in 2014 before it suspended sales after the crash of its first space plane, V.S.S. Enterprise, during a test flight. About 600 people have tickets from the earlier round of sales.

And if you haven’t already put down a $1,000 refundable deposit, you’ll have to wait even longer. Virgin Galactic will first make tickets available to the 1,000 people who were able to reserve a spot on the waiting list for when ticket sales resumed.

This morning, the government will report how many workers U.S. employers added to their payrolls in July. Economists expect a big number — as many as 850,000 — in another sign that the economic recovery continues.

The stakes are higher than usual, as various emergency stimulus measures are about to expire, the infrastructure bill is nearing passage, and the Fed is contemplating how and when to taper its extraordinary efforts to support the economy during the pandemic. Economists have their eyes on both the number of jobs created as well as wages, which were up a relatively high 3.6 percent in June versus a year ago. Here’s how to interpret the results.

Weak job gains and little growth in wages: This is bad. The Delta variant of the coronavirus is causing more economic damage than thought. Congress could speed forward the infrastructure bill, and President Biden may emerge with more leverage to push through a bigger budget. As for the Fed? The urgency to taper bond...

PARIS — After almost 18 months of relying on expensive emergency aid programs to support their economies through the pandemic, governments across Europe are scaling back some of these measures, counting on burgeoning economic growth and the power of vaccines to carry the load from here.

But the insurgent spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus has thrown a new variable into that calculation, prompting concerns about whether this is the time for scheduled rollbacks in financial assistance.

The tension can be seen in France, where the number of virus cases has increased more than 200 percent from the average two weeks ago, prompting President Emmanuel Macron to try to push the French into getting vaccinated by threatening to make it harder to shop, dine or work if they don’t.

At the same time, some pandemic aid in France — including generous state funding that prevented mass layoffs by subsidizing wages, and relief for some businesses struggling to pay...

When offices finally reopen, some companies plan to use them in a very different way than they did before the pandemic, giving workers the choice to come in just a few days a week, or not at all.

Some employees are eager to return to the office full time as soon as they can, but others can’t imagine ever going back to the way things were. Offering people more flexibility over where they work can help attract and retain talent, companies say.

Around 10,000 employees at Google recently applied to work remotely or transfer to a different location, and the company approved 85 percent of the requests. The real estate platform Zillow says more women have applied for its jobs since it announced a year ago that most of its 5,900 employees could work from home permanently. The software company Slack, which also offered permanent remote positions last year, said that among recent hires the number of minority workers was 50 percent higher for those who planned to work...

The Biden administration is vetting a new candidate for the job of top banking regulator after abandoning two earlier choices because a fight broke out within the Democratic Party. If the candidate — Saule Omarova, a professor of banking law at Cornell University Law School — is nominated to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and secures Senate support, Wall Street’s biggest banks can expect a less cozy relationship with her than they had with recent predecessors.

President Biden’s aides are vetting Ms. Omarova, and the process is in its early stages, said two people familiar with the matter, who were not authorized to speak publicly. She could be nominated in the coming months or by early next year, the people said. She would then need Senate confirmation to serve a five-year term.

Spokeswomen for the White House and the O.C.C. declined to comment.

Ms. Omarova is seen as less controversial than the two previous candidates to lead the agency,...

The only realistic end of the Covid-19 pandemic lies with widespread vaccinations, but a sizable part of the population doesn’t want them. A broad range of public responses is possible.

At one extreme are government mandates. Everyone could be required to be vaccinated or face severe punishments. At the other extreme are what Cass Sunstein and I called “nudges” in the first edition of our 2008 book. As we define the term, nudges gently guide people without requirements or economic incentives. Informing people about the benefits of vaccinations and making it as easy as possible to get a shot are in this category.

Many interventions fall between these two extremes. We might call those pushes and shoves.

Wisely or not, governments around the world so far have generally rejected the idea of a hard, universal requirement to be vaccinated, in spite of many precedents. For example, George Washington inoculated his troops against smallpox. Individual states have long...

If you were hoping to buy a ticket to space on one of Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space planes, you’ll probably wish you bought one seven years ago.

On Thursday, Virgin Galactic announced that it was resuming sales of tickets on its flights, which rise above 50 miles and offer about four minutes of free fall and a view of Earth against the darkness of space.

The price: at least $450,000 per seat.

That’s some $200,000 more than what the company was charging in 2014 before it suspended sales after the crash of its first space plane, V.S.S. Enterprise, during a test flight. About 600 people have tickets from the earlier round of sales.

And if you haven’t already put down a $1,000 refundable deposit, you’ll have to wait even longer. Virgin Galactic will first make tickets available to the 1,000 people who were able to reserve a spot on the waiting list for when ticket sales resumed.

PARIS — After almost 18 months of relying on expensive emergency aid programs to support their economies through the pandemic, governments across Europe are scaling back some of these measures, counting on burgeoning economic growth and the power of vaccines to carry the load from here.

But the insurgent spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus has thrown a new variable into that calculation, prompting concerns about whether this is the time for scheduled rollbacks in financial assistance.

The tension can be seen in France, where the number of virus cases has increased more than 200 percent from the average two weeks ago, prompting President Emmanuel Macron to try to push the French into getting vaccinated by threatening to make it harder to shop, dine or work if they don’t.

At the same time, some pandemic aid in France — including generous state funding that prevented mass layoffs by subsidizing wages, and relief for some businesses struggling to pay...

The only realistic end of the Covid-19 pandemic lies with widespread vaccinations, but a sizable part of the population doesn’t want them. A broad range of public responses is possible.

At one extreme are government mandates. Everyone could be required to be vaccinated or face severe punishments. At the other extreme are what Cass Sunstein and I called “nudges” in the first edition of our 2008 book. As we define the term, nudges gently guide people without requirements or economic incentives. Informing people about the benefits of vaccinations and making it as easy as possible to get a shot are in this category.

Many interventions fall between these two extremes. We might call those pushes and shoves.

Wisely or not, governments around the world so far have generally rejected the idea of a hard, universal requirement to be vaccinated, in spite of many precedents. For example, George Washington inoculated his troops against smallpox. Individual states have long...