You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.
$50 to $200 an hour
Tech companies are paying models by the hour to come to their stupid office holiday party so that it isn’t a depressing nightmare. This is a high water mark year for the sketchy practice, which is pretty tone deaf given the ongoing workplace sexual harassment conversations. [Bloomberg]
69 percent
Phil Bredesen is the last Democrat to win statewide office in Tennessee, winning a second term as governor in 2006 with 69 percent of the vote. With the retirement of Republican Sen. Bob Corker, Bredesen has been recruited as the Democrats’ top candidate for a once-safe GOP seat. [The Cook Political Report]
554,000
The number of homeless people in the U.S. — 193,000 of whom have no access to nightly shelter, and one percent higher than 2016. It’s the first increase in the homeless population since 2010. [The Associated Press]
$98 million
That’s the amount of grants given out by the Department of Justice to law enforcement agencies around the country, of which zero went to the LAPD despite a promising community policing initiative with a strong track record being in the mix. Some LAPD officials believe the move was retaliatory given the agency’s hand-off approach to immigration law enforcement. [The Los Angeles Times]
$650 million
Seattle’s close to getting an NHL team: An ownership group will file an application to found a team that would play in the 2020-21 season. The team will cost $650 million and would round the NHL out to an even 32 teams. [NHL]
€55.5 billion – €65.5 billion
The European Union and the United Kingdom have struck a deal on the first phase of Brexit, with the U.K. pledging to honoring EU liabilities as they would have incurred had they remained a member state. Essentially, the EU budget isn’t going to have a Britain-sized hole in debt repayments. The EU estimates this to be €55 billion, and after other contingent liabilities should end up somewhere between €55.5 billion and €65.5 billion. Also, EU nationals living in the U.K. and U.K. nationals living in the EU are less screwed than they would have otherwise been. [The Financial Times]
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If you see a significant digit in the wild, send it to @WaltHickey.