3:55

Iran and Boeing go way back. Boeing was the largest supplier of civilian aircraft to Iran before the country’s 1979 Islamic revolution. And despite the fraught relations between the U.S. and Iran since then, Iran has kept flying those planes for decades.

As part of the recent Iranian nuclear deal and the lifting of sanctions, Boeing is once again permitted to sell planes to the Islamic Republic. And Iran desperately wants to start replacing its fleet of aging, worn-out commercial aircraft.

But don’t expect any deals anytime soon. Just last week, Iran announced preliminary plans to buy 118 planes from France-based Airbus in a deal worth roughly $27 billion.

Boeing, which is based in Chicago, says it isn’t rushing to get back into Iran, says spokesman Gordon Johndroe.

“There are many steps that need to be taken should we decide to sell airplanes to approved Iranian airlines. But for now, we continue to assess the situation,” he says.

Dr. Adam Pilarski, vice president of Avitas, an aviation consultancy group, says Boeing is wise to be cautious in any deal with Iran.

The nuclear sanctions have been lifted, and the sale of commercial aircraft are allowed. But the U.S. is keeping some sanctions against Iran in place that are linked to human rights issues and terrrorism. Pilarski says Boeing would need to clarify a number of things before working out a deal.

“There are various complicated legal issues that many lawyers have to go through,” he says, adding “For example, could any of the technology on the new aircraft be used for military purposes?”

Boeing and Airbus compete fiercely around the world for airplane sales. But Pilarski says there’s no need for Boeing to panic about getting beat to the punch in Iran. He says it’s normal for a country buying aircraft to play two companies off each other for better price leverage in negotiations. Pilarski says it’s likely Boeing is already quietly exploring a deal.

“I would be very surprised if Iran only buys airplanes from Airbus and none from Boeing. That would be a huge surprise to me. It doesn’t make sense,” he says.

Ardavan Amir-Aslani, a French-Iranian lawyer who is negotiating deals with Tehran for French companies says the Airbus deal isn’t set in stone.

“The agreements that have been signed are not definite, final documents,” he says.

Amir-Aslani says financing the Airbus deal is a challenge because it has to be done without using the U.S. financial system. U.S. banks are still barred from doing business in Iran, and most foreign banks have partnerships with U.S. banks. Amir-Aslani says there’s a difference between announcing a deal with Airbus and having an actual contract in hand.

“We’re talking about memorandums of understanding or letters of intent. So the actual implementation of these contracts is going to happen over time,” he says.

Iran may have other more pressing needs for its money – from rebuilding its infrastructure to modernizing its oilfields. Richard Aboulafia, an analyst with the Teal Group, an aerospace consultancy, says Iran may decide to lease new planes, not buy them. He says losing a deal wouldn’t affect Boeing too much.

“I don’t think this matters a whole heck of a lot. I mean you’re talking about an industry that pumps out 1,400 jets a year,” he says.

Even if it doesn’t sell planes, Boeing could make a lot of money another way. Many of those old jets that Iran is still flying are in desperate need of Boeing parts and maintenance, Aboulafia says

3:45

For lots of people Super Bowl Sunday isn’t even about the football, it’s about the commercials. Over the years, advertising spots during the Super Bowl have become more elaborate, more talked about and more expensive than ever.

CBS, which is airing Super Bowl 50 this Sunday, is charging advertisers between $4.8 and $5 million for a 30-second spot. That’s up from a $4.4 million average cost last year, and $2.5 million a decade ago, according to Kantar Media. Last year’s game drew a record 114.4 million viewers, with even more expected this year.

With the hefty price tag for television time, advertisers are integrating social media and online advertising to try to maximize exposure. And companies are even putting the ads on YouTube in advance of the Big Game.

So what should we expect this year?

“Compared to last year we’re really seeing much more fun,” says Jeanine Poggi, who covers the TV industry for Advertising Age. This year’s Super Bowl will be “a lot more star-studded,” she told NPR’s Michel Martin. Poggi says this year’s ads include about 40 celebrities, up from about 28 last year.

In this ad for Bud Light, Amy Schumer and Seth Rogen say America’s shared love of beer will bring the country together:

If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to see Jeff Goldblum sing and play a piano as it goes up the side of an apartment building, here’s your chance:

Christopher Walken says socks can be exciting, and so can the Kia Optima:

This is after last year, when most of the talked-about ads took a serious tone.

“We actually were kind of dubbing it the ‘Somber Bowl,'” Poggi says. “There was cyber bullying, domestic abuse.”

This Nationwide commercial from last year about a boy who got killed from preventable household accidents got a lot of backlash:

“That’s just depressing,” says Poggi, who says that serious ads do tend to outperform humorous ones. “But, if you have a Super Bowl filled with these depressing, sad [ads] none of them stand out from each other.”

The Super Bowl is one of the few times advertisers can get a massive audience in the age of Netflix and hundreds of cable channels.

And how do the modern ads stack up against some old favorites?

Michael Hiltzik argued in the Los Angeles Times that no Super Bowl ad will ever top the 1984 Apple ad for the Macintosh computer, which set the standard that Super Bowl ads should be different:

Some lists put this 1979 Mean Joe Greene ad for Coca-Cola as one of the best, maybe because many people still remember it:

The Budweiser frogs ad from 1995 was a simple concept. But at least you remember what it was for:

And USA Today puts this McDonald’s ad with Larry Bird and Michael Jordan at the top of its list:

3:51

The jobs numbers are in: 150,000 jobs were added to the economy in January. That’s fewer than expected, though the unemployment rate fell to an eight-year low.

President Obama took the opportunity this morning to take a shot at some of his more vocal opponents.

“The United States of America, right now, has strongest, most durable economy in the world,” he said. “I know that’s still inconvenient for GOP stump speeches, as their ‘Doom And Despair’ tour plays in New Hampshire — I guess you cannot please everybody.”

There was a lot of good news in the report: It wasn’t just hours worked that went up, pay went up too — and that hasn’t happened in years.

But those things aren’t true for everyone.

“One of the problems is that we continue to have a tale of two economies,” says Imara Jones is a economist and writer. “[The improvement] is mostly true for people who are white, have good educations, and are tied to those sectors that are flourishing in the global economy. And then we have the economy of everyone else that has been left out and left behind”

One of the groups left behind is African-Americans. Their unemployment rate, 8.8 percent, is more than double the rate for whites, 4.3 percent, and is actually closer to the 9 percent unemployment rates whites experienced in the depths of the recession. And for blacks, the rate actually went up last month.

Lowell Blackmon, 20, is working on getting a GED — and on getting a job.

“Right now, any type of job that, you know — that can pay me,” he says. “I’m good with my hands, so I like to work a lot. They got a lot of jobs out here, you just gotta have your stuff to be able to do it.”

Valerie Johnson, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, says part of the reason the unemployment rate for blacks may have gone up is because more were looking for work.

“Perhaps people who were previously unemployed were encouraged by last month’s numbers and are now looking for employment,” she says, adding that while there’s good news for everyone in this months’ report, “we still maintain that roughly 2-to-1 ratio between black and white unemployment.”

“That disparity is very persistent,” Johnson says, “and it’s present whether we’re in a recession or in a recovery. It’s present at all levels of education.”

Gwendolyn Cole hopes she’s one of the workers headed in the right direction — she’s been out of a job for two years, but just got an interview with the utility company Pepco.

“I’m so happy about it, ’cause I did 15 years with D.C. Public Schools, and then I turned around and did 15 years as home child care provider,” she says. “So I went into electronics, and it’s a wonderful field, because it’s more data entry, customer service.”

Cole’s work history shows why many African-Americans are struggling to make their way out of the last recession, says Imara Jones.

African-Americans are more likely to be teachers and firefighters and police than their white counterparts — in part because of the strong anti-discrimination laws that exist for government jobs that you don’t have in the private sector,” he says. “And of course during the Great Recession, one of the greatest lagging sectors in jobs was that — in government.”

Jones says though there is a still a lot of good news, but a lot of people especially African-Americans — don’t feel like they’re benefiting from it yet.

“Once you have labor force participation going up, unemployment coming down, wages going up and hours going up, that’s the sign of a recovery — but we’re not there yet,” he says.

But economists Imara Jones and Valerie Johnson do say we’re getting closer — one little step at a time.

3:37

“Full employment” is a phrase economists use to explain how the job market recovers from a recession. We’ll be hearing this phrase a lot as the Labor Department releases the latest jobs data on Friday. It’s expected to show that employers added even more workers in January.

But the phrase doesn’t tell the full story for millions of Americans either still out of work or who are looking for something better than part-time work.

What is full employment and what does it mean?

To economists, it’s when the number of people seeking jobs is roughly in balance with the number of openings. It doesn’t mean the unemployment rate is zero because that’s not realistic. There will always be some unemployment. Companies have to close down obsolete operations, individuals have to quit their jobs to move with a spouse, or they might move to look for something better with higher pay.

If the economists don’t mean zero unemployment when they use the phrase “full employment,” what do they mean?

Economists say a healthy job market has an unemployment rate somewhere between 4.6 percent and 5 percent. Some people are quitting, some people are getting hired — there’s churn but no despair. In December, the national rate was 5 percent and now many predictions have the rate gliding down to 4.6 percent by July. So bingo, we’re basically there at full employment. If all goes as expected in 2016, people who want jobs will be able to find them, and employers who need workers will be able to attract them.

Is it really fair to use the term “full employment” when that doesn’t seem to match the reality that a lot of people are experiencing?

Those words can hit hard and they can hurt because it sounds like you must be doing something wrong. But really, unemployment is very regional. In West Virginia, there are counties today with unemployment rates of 12 percent or even 13 percent. But in California’s Silicon Valley, the rate is virtually zero, with companies battling each other for workers. So geography matters!

And there are big differences based on age. For black teenagers nationwide, the unemployment rate is 21 percent. For women of any color, if you’re 50, studies show you have a tough time getting back to the workforce. You become long-term unemployed. Besides age and location, more than anything, education determines your unemployment rate. For college graduates, it’s 2.3 percent unemployment; for high school dropouts, 7 percent.

Is “full employment” something that a lot of Americans are still going to experience as something very unsatisfying?

If you’re a 30-year-old with a college degree and a U-Haul, you’re all set, you can find jobs. If you want to go to night school and you want to move, you can be part of that full employment economy. But the reality for a lot of people is that it is very hard. About 7.9 million people remain unemployed because they may not fit that demographic description. Like women in their 50s who may actually be at the center of a whole financial and emotional ecosystem, taking care of aging parents, as well as children and grandchildren, it can be very hard to move.

Is this sort of a new normal in that what we call “full employment” is really not at all “full” but very uneven?

Yes, we can say now that for younger, tech-savvy, well-educated people, jobs abound. The recession truly is over. And 2016 should be a great year for job hunting. But for people in their 50s with rusty skills or teenagers with relatively little education, the phrase “full employment” is a painful taunt.

4:32

The once-great gambling town has made a deal with New Jersey to turn it’s finances around. Christian Hetrick, who’s been following the story for the Press in Atlantic City updates Scott Simon.

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Atlantic City has been in decline for decades. And now the state of New Jersey has made a deal with the city to take over its finances and try to turn the formerly high-rolling town around.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

CHRIS CHRISTIE: We wanted to give Atlantic City a five-year opportunity to have some of these problems worked out on their own. They didn’t. And so now we need to take those stronger steps to intervene and to work as partners with the mayor going forward.

SIMON: Governor Chris Christie of course. We visited Atlantic City just over a year ago. It didn’t seem like a place to go for a good time. Downtown looked abandoned. Four of the main casinos were closed. Seven thousand people had just lost their jobs. But Mayor Don Guardian – a Republican – said he had to see the setbacks as new opportunities for investors and his city.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DON GUARDIAN: We are Filene’s Basement. You’re not going to find a better bargain than coming to Atlantic City. Two billion two hundred million dollars property at Revel you’re going to pick up for about $100 million. Four hundred million dollar casino that closed, other than Revel, you’re going to pick up for $25 million.

SIMON: So far, there have been few takers. Those four casinos remain closed. What had been the Showboat was just recently purchased. We’re joined now by Christian Hetrick of the Press of Atlantic City whose beat has been covering the city’s recovery and local politics. Mr. Hetrick, thanks very much for being with us.

CHRISTIAN HETRICK: Hey, thanks for having me on.

SIMON: From your experience and reporting, Mr. Hetrick, what can the state of New Jersey do that Atlantic City, as a municipality, couldn’t to try and turn things around?

HETRICK: Sure. Well, it’s really big things. The state has really been public about wanting the water company to be either sold to the county, which does have its own utilities authority, or possibly privatized, run by a company like, you know, American Water, United Water, because it’s, you know, been estimated that it could be worth $100 million or even more than that.

SIMON: What an opportunity.

HETRICK: Yeah, yeah, and, you know, what’s interesting now with this, you know, takeover talk, you know, a lot of people at the last council meeting have been invoking Flint, Mich., for obvious reasons ’cause in that case it was an emergency manager who, you know, recommended changes to that water supply. And – well, I know it wasn’t privatized. It was kind of rerouted, but still, people see similarities and are obviously naturally scared.

SIMON: Yeah. I suspect, Mr. Hetrick, a lot of people listening in the rest of America might be saying, look, Atlantic City is a place where people go to, you know, throw away their money. Why can’t they make a go of that?

HETRICK: Well, the gambling industry is still very, very big compared to other gambling industries across the country, but it’s really half of what it used to be. The casinos collectively, there’s eight left. They’ve brought in $2.7 billion in casino winnings this year. To compare that, they had $5.2 billion in 2006, so it’s really been cut in half. And then…

SIMON: And is that because of the other places that have opened up and down the…

HETRICK: Sure, sure, yeah, casinos have sprouted up in Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut. You know, if you’re in North Jersey, why go an hour and a half south when you can probably just hop over the New York State border and maybe go somewhere closer? And so you kind of have, like, this one-two punch where, you know, the casinos are making less money and closing, and in turn that makes it difficult in terms of the city collecting taxes.

SIMON: What about those big old empty casinos? Any activity going on there?

HETRICK: Well, two of them, yes. The Revel casino does have a new owner. It ended up selling for $88 million, and then the Showboat as well just recently sold. And then the other two properties, though, are still – not too much movement on them.

SIMON: Why not just declare bankruptcy and pay off a few pennies on the dollar?

HETRICK: You know, there are pros and cons to it. You know, the city has $240 million in bonded debt. So, you know, through bankruptcy, you would shed that debt. You could toss out some collective bargaining agreements with the police and the fire. But there’s cons as well. You know, it’s obviously bad PR for a destination resort to be bankrupt. And then it also – bankruptcy doesn’t solve the annual budget deficits. So Atlantic City had $100 million budget shortfall they had to fill in 2015. And it’s estimated that the budget shortfall in 2016 is going be about $60 million. It solves a debt problem, but it doesn’t solve the spending and revenue problems.

SIMON: Christian Hetrick of the Press of Atlantic City, thanks so much.

HETRICK: Thank you for having me.

Copyright © 2016 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio.

2:30

The government is proposing to require employers to report pay data by race, gender and ethnicity. The president is using executive power to make the rule change, which is set to take effect in 2017.

Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

President Obama has announced that, for the first time, employers will have to disclose data about what they pay their employees. This is along with information that’s already provided about race, gender and ethnicity. The administration says this will enable regulators to crack down on pay discrimination. NPR’s Yuki Noguchi reports.

YUKI NOGUCHI, BYLINE: The president made the announcement at an event celebrating the seventh anniversary of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. The law extended the period in which a pay discrimination suit can be filed. But he says that’s only part of the equation.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

BARACK OBAMA: The typical woman who works full-time still earns 79 cents per every dollar that the typical man does. The gap’s even wider for women of color.

NOGUCHI: Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will collect data from employers with more than 100 workers. That will help determine where and which industries the pay gap persists. EEOC chairman Jenny Yang says that will also help her agency and the Labor Department enforce equal pay laws.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

JENNY YANG: Our agencies will use this data to more effectively focus investigations, assess complaints of discrimination and identify existing pay disparities that warrant further examination.

NOGUCHI: Yang also says she hopes the act of collecting and reporting the data will help companies self-correct. That was the case for Marc Benioff, CEO of salesforce.com. He says his team identified a pay gap he didn’t know existed.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MARC BENIOFF: They said, hey, Mark, we may be paying women less at Salesforce. I go, that’s not possible. Well, guess what? We were – $3 million less.

NOGUCHI: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce criticized the new requirement, calling it burdensome. Other business groups say they’re reviewing the new rules. Sarah Moore is an attorney at Fisher and Phillips who represents employers. She says discussing pay used to be taboo in the office, but that’s rapidly giving way to transparency.

SARAH MOORE: It’s really key for companies to embrace the spirit of today’s announcement and begin to proactively prepare for the annual reporting of pay data to the EEOC.

NOGUCHI: Research suggests discrimination is only one reason for the pay gap. The president says he’ll also continue pushing to get more women in higher-paying jobs in science and technology, as well as fighting pregnancy discrimination and mandating paid family and sick leave. The new pay data rule is open for public comment and will take effect in September of next year. Yuki Noguchi, NPR News, Washington.

Copyright © 2016 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio.