Category: Business

There are almost 28 million small businesses in the U.S. today, including 22 million self-employed small business owners — and social media giant Instagram wants to help them succeed. The picture sharing app offers a unique advertising platform for small local businesses, and on March 22, the website officially reached 1 million advertisers, which is five times more than they had a year ago. Not only that, but most of Instagram’s advertisers are small businesses, from local bakeries to independent … Continue reading “Instagram Hits 1 Million Advertisers, Propels Small Business to Success”

The engineers have spoken, and the results don’t look good. In a recent report card of the nation’s infrastructure, the U.S. has received a D+. This almost failing grade was given by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in March as a part of the assessment the group releases every four years. While shocking, this grade is barely any different from that of 2013. This means that the infrastructure nationwide has been deemed “poor” and “at risk” for over … Continue reading “The Report is Here: American Infrastructure Is Crumbling”

There were 35.7 million people without healthcare insurance in the U.S. in 2014, but if Republicans pass a plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, that number could rise to 52 million by 2026. The proposed bill is called the American Health Care Act and it will allow insurance companies to charge older adults up to five times more than younger generations. This will lead to disastrously high rates for older Americans with lower incomes who retire early — an … Continue reading “Elderly Health Jeopardized if Republican Healthcare Bill is Approved”

Approximately 82% of Botox recipients typically see results within a week of their treatment, but there’s a new population of Botox patients in the world. Many millennials are spending money to have Botox procedures done to improve the appearance of their face and other body parts. In the U.S., approximately 46.5 million surgical procedures are performed each year. The Botox phenomenon is usually centralized in Los Angeles and surrounding communities, but social media has created such a need for the … Continue reading “Rate of Botox Procedures in Individuals Aged 19-25 Increasing”

When was the last time you got away? While 78% of executives believe that vacations are necessary for preventing burnout, recent studies have shown that Americans are failing to heed their own advice when it comes to effective stress management. A recent Bankrate survey found that a whopping 52% of Americans who received paid vacation time in 2016 failed to use it all. In fact, 30% of those employees with paid vacation time stated that they would have anywhere from … Continue reading “A Nation of Workaholics: More Than Half of the American Workforce Fails To Use Vacation Days”

Nearly 40 million people visit Chicago every year, but it doesn’t appear that a lot of them are sticking around. According to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau report, between July 2015 and July 2016, 114,144 Illinois residents moved out of state. Most American adults (57%) have never lived outside of their home state. On the other hand,15% have lived in four or more states. Over the past three years, the exodus out of Illinois increased from one resident every … Continue reading “Why Over 114,000 People Left Illinois in Just 12 Months”

There are approximately 110 million emergency room visits annually, and a number of those may be a result of bird flu concerns in the Czech Republic. The disease was recently discovered on two poultry farms and in several swans in the southeast. Several tests performed on the infected birds confirmed that a highly contagious strain of the disease, known as H5, was present. Additional testing determined that the “assumed” N8 sub-type was also present in the birds. The areas of … Continue reading “Bird Flu Discovered in Swans and Poultry Farms in Czech Republic”