You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.
0.64 percent
A study from Ball State University reports that a quarter of U.S. jobs are vulnerable to offshoring, but the stunning statistic is an estimate that half of net business formation in the United States since the recession has happened in 0.64 percent of U.S. counties. That’s 20 of the 3,100 U.S. counties. [U.S. News & World Report, CBER]
8 percent
Several people reportedly got sick after eating at the same Chipotle in Sterling, Va. This could not be worse news for the company that has seen previous outbreaks of food-borne illness. Chipotle’s stock price plunged 8 percent on Tuesday over a matter of hours, wiping out all its gains for the year. [Bloomberg]
28.5 percent
Percent of female comic book characters with a gendered name that had a diminutive in it — think names like “Wonder Girl,” “Wonder Lass” or “Wonder Doll” rather than “Wonder Woman” — compared to 12.6 percent of male characters with a gendered name. [The Pudding]
8 Republicans
With the support of seven Assembly Republicans and one Senate Republican, California’s Democratic-controlled legislature successfully passed Assembly Bill 398, which extends the state’s cap-and-trade program. [The Los Angeles Times]
HB 640
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu signed HB 640 and made New Hampshire the 22nd state to decriminalize marijuana. The “live free or die” state was slower than the likes of Mississippi and Nebraska in making this change. [Cannabis Now]
$2.3 trillion
Annual U.S. health spending on chronic physical and mental conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure. Controlling those illnesses — and staving off the deleterious and far more expensive health maladies that they can lead to — could save the U.S. health care system a lot of money. [U.S. News & World Report]
If you see a significant digit in the wild, send it to @WaltHickey.