You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.
20 percent
Percentage of renters who have no interest in owning a home, according to the latest from a semiannual Freddie Mac survey. That’s up from 13 percent in 2016. Personally, I’m still feeling pretty burned by the crushing debt of a college degree and I’m not exactly itching to dive into a second crushing debt of a home, but that may just be me. [The Wall Street Journal]
4 ways
(Sponsored by Mott & Bow) A typical pair of jeans derives comfort using a 2-way stretch design that works horizontally. One denim brand decided to add an extra dimension to their way of thinking, and introduced these 4-way stretch jeans that work in both vertical and horizontal directions, allowing for maximum mobility and comfort.
27 candidates
All told 27 different candidates are slated to appear on California’s gubernatorial primary ballot on June 5. The top two vote getters, regardless of party, will proceed to the general election this fall. The two top contenders are Democrats Gavin Newsom and Antonio Villaraigosa, but multi-candidate fields are weird, so Democrat John Chiang and Republican John Cox are also in this. [The New York Times]
74.5 percent
In 2016, gun homicides made up 74.5 percent of all homicides, the highest share in all the years for which data exists since 1910. Since the late sixties, gun homicides usually accounted for something between 60 and 70 percent of all killings. [The Washington Post]
95 percent
That’s the percentage of the world cocoa output that is produced by small farmers. The issue with cocoa production is that yields are flat, and there aren’t really ways to get more cocoa out of a plot of land. As a result, supply increases to meet the ravenous demand for chocolate mean that cultivators have had to expand their footprint. Ivory Coast, the No. 1 grower of cocoa, cut down 64 percent of its forest cover from 1990 to 2015, lots of which went to cocoa farming land. [Bloomberg]
5,776 isolates
When the principal deputy director of the CDC says something like “I was surprised by the numbers we found” with regards to a report studying new and highly antibiotic resistant bacteria, maybe it’s an opportunity to reflect on how much you wash your hands. The report studied 5,776 isolates of antibiotic resistant bacteria collected from hospitals and nursing homes and found one in four had a gene that helped it become resistant to drugs and 221 had a particularly rare gene. Those 221 gnarly varieties were found in 27 different states. [CNN]
$940 million
Approximate value of Spotify shares that changed hands yesterday, as the music streaming company went public to a modest gain 13 percent above its $132 reference price. That trade volume is the fourth largest opening trading day since 2010. [The Wall Street Journal]
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