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Markets were closed for Good Friday, but we still have job, unemployment and wage numbers for you. Plus, see how your electric bill compares to other parts of the country with an interactive map, and start the long holiday weekend with our weekly news quiz. And if you’re watching college basketball’s Final Four play this weekend, don’t miss my colleague Richard Perrins’ look at how money is changing March Madness. — Carrie Barber, newsletter editor

UConn basketball player Braylon Mullins, back to the camera, holds his arms up in the air on the court.

Braylon Mullins of the UConn Huskies celebrates after shooting the game-winning 3-point basket in the Elite Eight game of the 2026 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. (Emilee Chinn/Getty Images)

How an influx of money has put the March Madness "Cinderella story" at risk

The college basketball tournament has had fewer upsets, with larger budgets at the top. The NCAA’s new financial structure could be the reason.

Duke University men’s basketball led by as many as 19 points in the first half of Sunday’s game against the University of Connecticut — an Elite Eight matchup in the third-to-last round of the NCAA Tournament.

But UConn fought back. In the dying seconds, guard Braylon Mullins launched a 3-point shot from distance to put the Huskies up 73-72 with 0.3 seconds remaining.

It was a historic comeback and a crushing loss for Duke, which had entered the tournament as one of the consensus favorites. It was hardly an upset, though. UConn was ranked No. 2 in its division, and has previously won the tournament six times, most recently in 2024 — that’s one more than Duke.

In a tournament renowned for “Cinderella stories,” where lower-ranked teams make a run against traditionally successful programs, those upsets are becoming less and less frequent. The reason could be the college sports landscape’s name, image, and likeness rules and the transfer portal.

“I think the phrase that we’re hearing a lot more is ‘chalk,’ that we should expect the higher-seeded teams to win, and they are winning, by and large,” said Rick Burton, a professor of sports management at Syracuse University. “That may be the new reality of the college basketball tournament, which is that those that can’t afford the talent are going to have a much harder time.”

News you should know

Let’s do the numbers

U.S. employers added 178,000 jobs in March, about three times more than economists were expecting and a big rebound from February’s loss of 133,000 jobs, the Labor Department reported today.
The unemployment rate fell a bit to 4.3%. That’s partly due to fewer people looking for work in the low-hire, low-fire labor market. Black unemployment dipped to 7.1%.
Wages grew very slowly in March, up just 0.2% from February. That’s not surprising in a slow labor market, but it’s a problem for consumers enduring higher prices for many necessities.
The national average for a gallon of regular gas was $4.09 today. A barrel of Brent crude, the international benchmark, jumped 7.8% to $109.03 while the Iran war prevented crude oil from passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

Your money

The U.S. is the world's largest producer of oil and natural gas, so why have gas bills stayed stable while gas prices have topped $4 all week? It comes down to infrastructure.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order threatening tariffs as high as 100% on imported medication unless foreign drugmakers lower prices and relocate manufacturing to the U.S.
Can AI build a better bracket? The Wall Street Journal let ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini into its newsroom March Madness pool. Track their picks game by game. (Gift link)

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“All of a sudden, there was a sort of an awakening that all these places that companies thought, ‘Hey, we have no water risk at all, they realized, like, ‘We've got exposure, we've got risk, and we need to pay attention.’”

— Todd Reeve, CEO of Bonneville Environmental Foundation

The Colorado River is drying up, and so is federal funding to make water systems more efficient. Bonneville connects companies with money, like Procter & Gamble, to conservation products that help fill those funding gaps. Reeve said it took a while to convince corporations that water shortages would hurt their businesses. A chance to burnish their images helped too.

HEAR MORE

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LET'S GO

A map of Pasadena, California, showing area's electric rates.

Heatmap Electricity Hub

Final note

Plugged in to electricity prices

Gas prices are high, but at least we have a relatively clear picture of what we’re paying and why. Electricity rates, on the other hand, have a big transparency problem, according to Heatmap. The climate news site partnered with MIT to fix that problem with the Heatmap Electricity Hub. If you're living in Pasadena, California — home of Marketplace HQ — the average monthly bill is about $118, up a whopping 33.7% in five years. Plug in your address to find your ZIP code’s rates.

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