In an interview with "Axios on HBO," Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi defended his company's position that drivers shouldn't be classified as employees, adding that pay is fair and that he wouldn't support a driver's union.
Why it matters: Uber and other gig economy companies are under increasing political pressure to provide higher wages and better benefits to their workers, and in California to stop classifying them as independent contractors.
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group reported on Monday that sales reached 91.2 billion yuan ($13 billion) within the first hour and two minutes of Singles' Day, an annual 24-hour shopping fest akin to Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the United States, according to Reuters.
Why it matters: Singles' Day is the world's largest online sales event. Last year, Alibaba reported $30 billion worth of Singles' Day sales, dwarfing the $7.9 billion of online sales for last year's Cyber Monday in the U.S.
A predicted wave of new jobs in the drone industry may spread beyond the usual tech hotbeds, attached not just to research universities in wealthy areas but to delivery and logistics hubs, construction sites and big industrial installations.
Why it matters: It's not yet clear how much new work drones will create, but where new jobs are — and who will be equipped to do them — will help determine who will benefit from the Drone Age.
The top 1% of American households have almost as much wealth as the middle- and upper-middle classes combined, reports Bloomberg.
Why it matters: The richer the 1% becomes, the more opportunities they have, per Bloomberg. A large portion of their wealth comes from "huge returns in the stock market in the past decade, to the point that they now control more than half of the equity in the U.S. public and private companies," according to Federal Reserve data.
