Labor

While Amazon is testing drone delivery, ocean freight, (and teleportation devices, ok we made that up), WalMart has decided to take a different approach to fulfilling its online orders... employees will deliver packages on their way home from work!

As AP reports, in its latest effort to compete with online giant Amazon, Walmart is testing a delivery service using its own store employees, who will deliver packages ordered online while driving home from their regular work shifts.

When the Fed released last month's Beige Book, as part of the explanation why employers are having an increasingly more difficult time finding jobs, it presented the following disturbing anecdote from a Boston Fed respondent:

Employment, new orders, and production all slowed notably in May according to the MNI Chicago PMI report. Printing at 55.2 - below the lowest expectation - this is the lowest level since January's collapse.

Forecast range 56 - 62 from 34 economists surveyed... oops!

Breakdown:

Authored by Ilya Levtov via Priceonomics.com,

For many companies, the biggest cost is talent. This is especially true of Silicon Valley, where companies sell clicks and digital goods that do not have any material cost. So which companies' workforces are able to generate the most revenue?

America’s Best Economist Tells It Like It Is

The Middle Class Is Now The Company Store Class

Michael Hudson

Students usually don’t think of themselves as a class. They seem “pre-class,” because they have not yet entered the labor force. They can only hope to become part of the middle class after they graduate. And that means becoming a wage earner – what impolitely is called the working class.