Labor

When Raef Lawson filed his $586.56 lawsuit in San Francisco he probably didn't realize he could potentially end up disrupting the entire 'gig economy' that subsidizes a plethora of Silicon Valley tech giants from Uber to DoorDash, but that could very well end up being the outcome. 

As Yahoo points out today, Lawson used to be a delivery driver for GrubHub but now he finds himself at the epicenter of an ongoing legal battle over whether 1099 contractors working for firms GrubHub and Uber should really be counted at employees rather than independent contractors.

Authorted by Steven Hansen via StockBoardAsset.com,

When some think of the economy, they think of GDP. When I think of the economy, I try to visualize the average Joe and how he or she is doing.

According to Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard:

Esteemed Princeton professor and former Obama White House economist Alan Krueger is back with yet another prediction about why Americans, particularly men between the ages of 25-54, suddenly no longer have any interest in working.  In his report, entitled "Where Have All The Workers Gone? An Inquiry Into The Decline Of The U.S. Labor Force Participation Rate," Krueger ponders the data below which reveal that the labor force participation rate among men, aged 25-54, started dropping around 1965 and has been steadily declining ever since.

In a new downgrade of subprime lenders Capital One and Synchrony, Morgan Stanley sought to answer the nagging question of why subprime credit card losses are suddenly soaring, per the chart below, "if employment is so good." 

Initial jobless claims spiked 62k last week - thanks to a 51k surge in Texas - as the impact of Hurricane Harvey ripples (transitorily) through economic data.

This 26% spike in claims is the largest since 2005 (and biggest absolute rise since 2012).

The 298k print is the highest since April 2015.