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Caitlin Esch

Caitlin Esch

Senior Producer

Caitlin Esch is the senior producer of Marketplace's climate solutions podcast, "How We Survive," and its investigative podcast, "The Uncertain Hour." Caitlin joined Marketplace in 2014. Her work focuses on systemic inequality and the climate crisis. Caitlin's reporting (and the work of the teams she senior produces) have won several accolades, including three awards from the Society of American Business Editors & Writers, a Webby Award, and a New York Festivals Gold Award. The teams' work has been a finalist for the Loeb Awards twice, the Covering Climate Now Awards and the Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE) Awards. Caitlin has a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in journalism from University of California, Berkeley. She lives in Los Angeles.

Latest from Caitlin Esch

  • Jimmy Nicks, a chicken catcher in Mississippi.
    Caitlin Esch/Marketplace

    When chicken catcher Jimmy Nicks’ job was subcontracted, he started doing the same job for a new boss — only without the pay, protections and benefits he’d come to rely on.

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  • A group of Accenture employees.
    Peter Balonon-Rosen/Marketplace

    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.

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  • “To suffer or permit to work”
    Ben Hethcoat/Marketplace

    We’ll finally tell you what happened to Jerry Vazquez and how it relates to the story of a 1930s hotel chambermaid. Plus, how we got the federal minimum wage and a new version of “The ABCs.”

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  • Feb 10, 2021

    Who’s the boss?

    Jerry Vazquez and his mother Isabelle.
    Krissy Clark/Marketplace

    Jerry Vazquez was running his own cleaning franchise, but he was barely getting by. He started feeling like he had little control over a business he owned — so Jerry decided it was time to fight back.

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  • Jerry Vazquez holding some of his Jan-Pro gear.
    Krissy Clark/Marketplace

    Jerry Vazquez always dreamed of owning his own business. But becoming a franchisee of a janitorial services company left him in debt and earning less than minimum wage.

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  • ‘The Uncertain Hour’ is back!
    Marketplace

    In season five, we’re looking at this thing we used to call employment. Listen to the trailer now.

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  • Answering your “History of Now” questions
    Ben Hethcoat/Marketplace

    We’re capping off our season by answering your questions about chicken workers, health insurance and more.

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  • The Exhibition Hall at the Seattle Center has been turned into a temporary men's shelter on April 6, 2020 in Seattle, Washington. The space currently has 150 beds, separated six feet apart.
    Karen Ducey/Getty Images

    Facilities sheltering unhoused people have become COVID-19 hotspots. But how did these communal living facilities become our primary response to homelessness in the first place?

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  • There are cracks in the foundation of our housing system
    F. Roy Kemp/BIPS/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

    Generations of discriminatory housing policy, and lending practices that favored white borrowers, have entrenched segregation and inequality in American cities.

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  • ![Some of the first recipients wait to receive benefits at the division office of the State Employment Service in San Francisco, California, 1938.
    Library of Congress

    The program dates back to the Great Depression, and even then it wasn’t meant to cover everyone.

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