10-min Delivery 📦, Gigs & the Travel Industry

How it works:
Unlike DoorDash or UberEats, these startups actually have a physical presence. They generally rent small storefronts in densely populated urban areas where employees stock and bag order items and hand them over to couriers who ferry them to their destination.

The companies benefit from a surge in funding for food and beverage delivery businesses - $16 billion in 2021 so far, according to CB Insights. The cash influx allows them to subsidize delivery making it cheaper than store-bought products. 

In an era where companies such as Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash offer primarily low-wage contractual work minus benefits, this new arrangement is an unexpected reflection of the current labor market. 

The unskilled labor market is very, very hot right now, with hourly pay rates in cities well over $15, often at $18. Gig economy companies will find it harder to recruit workers at their unfairly low-rates.

In the last two quarters, American companies posted their fattest margins since 1950. Overall profits were up 37% from last year, according to latest data from the Commerce Department. 

This obviously translated into higher individual incomes as businesses paid out more cash to their employees with total compensation up 12% in the last quarter from a year earlier. Hourly earnings kept up with the fast-rising cost of living. 

With more money to spend, it’s no surprise that U.S. consumer prices also rose 6.2% in the last 12-months, the most since 1990.

The three legs of the economic stool - profits, wages, and prices - all grew substantially this year. This, despite the fact that the economy’s been through a record-breaking low due to the pandemic. 

Reason: America’s Covid-era fiscal policy. 

Ample support for households meant their incomes actually rose so they bought more stuff from businesses which translated into higher demands, higher prices and therefore higher profits.

Unfortunately for Biden, pandemic spending could actually be the primary driver of rising inflation.

This may not last for long though as Covid-era commitments by the Fed start fading. But in the near term, there’s enough fuel in the economy already to sustain demand, jobs and higher pay. Households have cash saved up and companies have earnings they can invest.

51 million | Number of people who participated in Small Business Saturday. 

179.8 million | Number of unique shoppers who made in-store and online purchases during the holiday weekend.

82% | Percentage of shoppers surveyed who felt the deals were the same or better than last Thanksgiving weekend.

The tourism industry won’t be touching skies this year either. Despite so many airline startups propping up this year, offering cheap prices, despite low cost oil and aircrafts and despite ballooning travel desires, 2021 may prove even worse for the industry than last year. Courtesy: Delta and Omicron.