Boeing won't bring commercial jets to the Farnborough Airshow, a first for 16 years.
It also didn't bring any airliners to February's Singapore Airshow.
Boeing is prioritizing work on safety and quality plans after the Alaska Airlines blowout.
Boeing isn't bringing any of its commercial jets to this year's Farnborough Airshow, the company confirmed to Business Insider.
It's the first time for 16 years that it isn't displaying its airliners at the world's second-biggest air show. Farnborough alternates each year with Paris, the most-attended air show, meaning it's the primary aviation event for 2024. The Air Current first reported on the news.
Boeing also didn't display any passenger jets at February's Singapore Airshow. However, the Farnborough decision is more noteworthy.
It's a mainstay in the aviation world, where planemakers exhibit new aircraft and announce deals with airlines.
At the time of publication, one Boeing airliner, the 787 Dreamliner, is set to be displayed at Farnborough.
Rather than being sent by Boeing, however, this is courtesy of Qatar Airways, which is set to exhibit its upgraded QSuite business class.
Boeing is instead prioritizing work on a safety and quality plan as it works to regain the trust of regulators and customers following the Alaska Airlines 737 Max incident.
In a statement sent to Business Insider, Boeing said: "Our Commercial Airplanes team has been focused on implementing our comprehensive safety and quality plan and working to meet the commitments we've made to our customers."
"With these priorities in mind, we decided that rather than prepare and perform flight demonstrations this summer, we are redirecting the engineering and manufacturing resources toward airplane production and certification," it added.
"For more than a decade, we've brought our 787 Dreamliner, 777X and 737 Max airplanes to airshows around the world, including Farnborough, Paris, Dubai, India and Singapore. We look forward to doing the same in the future. Boeing will have a strong presence of defense, space, and security products — flying and on display."
At last year's Paris Air Show, Boeing displayed its 737 Max 10 — the longest version of its narrowbody jet — which is still awaiting certification. Approval has been further hampered by increased regulatory scrutiny following the blowout, when a Max 9 lost a door plug in midair.
After the blowout, Scott Kirby, the CEO of United Airlines, Boeing's biggest customer, called the incident "the straw that broke the camel's back." He added that the airline would build an alternative plan without the Max 10 due to the delays.
The 777X, an upgraded version of the widebody 777, was also on display in Paris. It was initially set to enter service in 2020, but this has been pushed back to 2025.
Young workers are increasingly considering customer service as the perfect "lazy girl job."
Westend61/Getty Images
Some Gen Zers appear to be gravitating toward customer service roles for a better work-life balance.
These roles can often be remote, flexible, and relatively well-paid,.
But they can also be stressful and have a significant mental health toll.
For Gen Z, it's all about working smarter, not harder.
And there seems to be an unlikely role that is getting a boost from this trend: customer services.
"The pay is usually decent, most companies are looking for work-from-home type of employees, and there is often schedule flexibility," said Dave Hoekstra, who has spent his entire career in customer service.
According to an analysis of a dataset of over 75 million white-color professionals by Jason Saltzman, the director of growth at Live Data Technologies, which is a provider of real-time employment data, Zoomers in customer success roles have increased in the past few years.
"Since 2021, Gen Z professionals make up a 22% greater share of the white-collar workforce," Saltzman told Business Insider — an increase from 5.1% in 2021 to 6.2% in 2024.
"In the same period, Gen Z employees now make up an 82% greater share of customer success roles," he said, increasing to 12.2% in 2024 from 6.7% in 2021.
Part of this is embracing "lazy girl jobs," a term coined by the TikTok content creator and "anti-work girlboss" Gabrielle Judge. Judge previously told BI that a lazy girl job is any well-paying role that is low-effort enough so people still have the energy to invest in the things they care about.
These jobs often offer hybrid or working-from-home options and are increasingly being considered as a low-stress option due to high levels of burnout felt by millennial and Zoomer workers.
In one video, Judge listed customer success manager as one example of a lazy girl job. According to Glassdoor, the average salary for this position is between $66,000 and $118,000 a year.
With a flexible schedule, a livable salary, and the ability to gain significant social media followers on the side, customer support roles may be an obvious choice for Gen Zers entering the workforce.
A focus on empathy
Hoekstra, who works at the workforce management platform Calabrio, told BI that the customer service industry "looks very different" compared to the late 1990s.
The average annual salary for a customer service rep in the US is $34,000 – $46,000, according to Glassdoor.
"If the employee doesn't mind being tethered to a headset all day and doesn't mind focusing on their job, then it can be a pretty rewarding experience as they look to the future," Hoekstra said.
Brittany Betts, who is on the cusp of millennial and Gen Z and handles customer service at a small travel company, told BI that "it allows you the opportunity to embrace your inner emotions and empathy with other people while simultaneously helping them find what they need.
"Gen Z has been known for many things and I know 'hardworking' hasn't generally been one, but we are definitely understanding if not anything else."
Social media side hustle
Customer service positions can give workers the freedom to be creative with a social media side hustle. On TikTok, videos under the hashtag #customerservice, where creators either show one side of a customer support call or reenact difficult interactions, can rack up millions of views.
Daineshe Sutton, for example, has gone viral with some of her videos, in which she shows how she handles escalations and steps in if customers are rude and cussing at other agents.
Sutton believes the influx of Gen Z and millennial workers is mostly due to remote work becoming the norm. She said these roles also don't come with the pressure to dress up every day or the fear of being judged on one's appearance.
"Remote work is focused solely on skills, knowledge, and the ability to effectively assist customers and not what you look like while doing it," she said.
Another creator, who posts anonymously under the name Disney Mom, has amassed 138,000 followers for her no-nonsense calls with what she describes as "entitled" customers.
"The fact I can work in my PJs without a bra on is my biggest flex," she said. "I hate driving in traffic, especially morning rush hour, because people are beyond nuts trying to rush to work."
But while such remote jobs are often portrayed as relatively stress-free, the reality is much more complex.
A 2024 Zendesk survey of 2,500 global consumers and 4,500 business respondents found that 21% of Zoomers had higher customer service expectations since the pandemic. Almost 50% also said an "unfriendly support agent" was what they found frustrating about a negative customer service experience.
The industry generally has a bad reputation. Customers feel exasperated when they can't speak to real reps and get enraged when their problems are not immediately solved, or they feel they are being passed from agent to agent with no answers.
One of the biggest downsides of the career is dealing with angry people, Sutton said. She can take anywhere between 45 and 100 calls per day, and it can be physically draining to maintain empathy and professionalism, which can take a toll on her mental health.
The job "requires a lot of patience and resilience," she said.
"Managing the diverse range of emotions and attitudes from callers is mentally and emotionally taxing," she said.
The creator known as Disney Mom agreed, saying she has had to deal with a lot of "dumb situations" and a significant number of calls where customers can be "rude, racist, and sexist."
Sutton started posting on TikTok because she saw "an opportunity to shed light on the realities of customer service." She wanted to provide a behind-the-scenes view of what happens when you call up a company to complain and challenge the mantra that "the customer is always right" — particularly when they are difficult.
More generally, remote jobs can often lead to a feeling of isolation.
"The lack of face-to-face interaction makes it harder to build rapport and convey empathy," Sutton said. "Requiring extra effort to ensure that the caller feels heard and understood."
Sutton hopes to be part of the industry changing for the better.
She never thought she'd gain traction, but when one of her videos amassed more than three million views, she realized how much it struck a chord with people.
"Ultimately, it's refreshing for viewers to see the work we do and the interactions we handle daily," she said.
Two St. Louis residents are suing to halt the city's guaranteed basic income program.
Art Wager / Getty Images
Two St. Louis residents filed a lawsuit to halt the city's guaranteed basic income pilot.
The program provides 540 low-income families $500 monthly to help them afford housing and food.
The lawsuit alleges that it's "unconstitutional" for St. Louis to use public money on basic income.
As St. Louis continues its guaranteed basic income pilot, two residents are suing to cut the program's funding.The lawsuit alleges that the city's plan to give low-income families $500 a month is unconstitutional in the state of Missouri.
Submitted to a circuit court on June 13, the lawsuitclaims that it is a Missouri Constitutional violation for local leaders to give cash to residents in the form of basic income. The suit cites a clause in the state's Constitution that prohibits all municipalities and political corporations from granting "public money or property to any private individual."
The plaintiffs, Greg Tumlin and Fred Hale, are both St. Louis residents. In a statement to Business Insider via his attorney, Tumlin said St. Louis cannot give individuals cash because they have "not performed a service for the city or sold any goods" that would warrant payment from the city.
The lawsuit requests that city officials stop spending money on basic income, a move that could shut down the GBI pilot. City officials have until June 28 to respond to Tumlin and Hale's lawsuit.
The GBI pilot is giving 540 families no-strings-attached cash payments for 18 months, and the first payments began at the end of 2023.Qualifying participants have a child enrolled in public schools and have a household income under 170% of the federal poverty line, which is around $50,000 a year for a family of four.
St. Louis' program mirrors over 100 basic income pilots that have been launched across the US, as the model becomes an increasingly popular approach to try to combat local poverty, food insecurity, and homelessness.
Basic income offers participants — who typically live at or below the federal poverty line — lump sum or monthly cash payments to spend on what they need most. Business Insider has heard from participants who used the money to secure housing, afford groceries and prescriptions, pay down debt, and support their children.
Adam Layne, the St. Louis city treasurer, previously told BI that St. Louis residents have primarily used their $500 a month to pay bills.
"We want to get people to a place of thriving rather than surviving," he said, adding, "That's why the success of the program is critical to be able to show the data about what impact is this actually having on St. Louisans."
Still, basic income pilots continue to be opposed at the city and state level — and St. Louis' program isn't the first to face legal opposition.
St. Louis GBI lawsuit includes concerns over funding, use of public money
The St. Louis program is funded by $5 million from President Joe Biden's 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), a pandemic economic relief fund that has previously been used by cities to launch GBI pilots. A donation from former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who is from St. Louis, also allowed the program to expand from 440 participants to 540.
Other basic income pilots are funded through federal programs like ARPA, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), or through private donors.
Tumlin and Hale's lawsuit specifically says that giving "public money" to St. Louis residents is unconstitutional, given that St. Louis is running the GBI pilot using some city funds.
BI reached out to the city of St. Louis and St. Louis Guaranteed Income for comment, but the parties did not respond by the time of publication.
Meanwhile, a similar case is active in Texas. In mid-June, the Texas Supreme Court further extended a pause on Uplift Harris, a guaranteed income program in Harris County, which contains Houston. Payments were set to begin in April, though Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton challenged the program as "unconstitutional." The suit, filed on April 9, noted that the program "redistributes public money in a manner that violates the Texas Constitution" through gifting public funds.
Uplift Harris, which had accepted just over 2% of applicants, would have given 1,928 families $500 a month, no strings attached, for 18 months. Most participants were selected from high-poverty ZIP codes with household incomes below 200% of the federal poverty line.
"Local governments exist in part to help the less fortunate among us, and the Supreme Court's ruling effectively ends a program that has proven to be highly successful at allowing lower-income folks to lift themselves out of poverty," said Harris County Attorney Christian D. Menefee in a statement.
However, it isn't clear if the results of basic income lawsuits in Harris County or St. Louis could affect one another or result in long-term bans — despite both cases being over the use of local government funds.
States like South Dakota, Arizona, and Iowa, Republican politicians have also brought basic income bans to the state legislature.
Elon Musk has said two people have "aspirationally" tried to kill him in recent months.
Richard Bord/Getty Images; Jenny Chang-Rodriguez/BI
Elon Musk said recently that "two homicidal maniacs" had threatened his life.
Law-enforcement records show Tesla's HQ has had several "terroristic threat" reports.
One related to an emailed death threat against the carmaker's CFO at the time, Zachary Kirkhorn.
In recent months, "two homicidal maniacs" have threatened to kill Elon Musk, the billionaire tech mogul said at Tesla's latest annual shareholder meeting.
"I probably need to like work out and, you know, and like not get assassinated or something," the CEO of the electric-car company told shareholders June 13 in response to a question about what he's doing to keep himself safe and healthy.
Musk said the two people "aspirationally" tried to kill him and "a bunch of other people" in the past seven months, forcing him to be a bit more "standoffish."
Security is a high priority for Musk. He owns his own security company, which Tesla pays millions of dollars to protect Musk, a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing shows.
Tesla has relatively tight security, and the company increased security at some of its factories during its recent wave of layoffs, several workers told Business Insider. Tesla factory workers have also faced their fair share of scares over the years, including, most recently, an active-shooter report that turned out to be a false alarm.
Law-enforcement records obtained by BI through a public-records request show that Musk has not been the only high-profile target of threats or intimidation at Tesla's sprawling corporate headquarters in Austin.
Zachary Kirkhorn, a former Tesla CFO, next to Musk.
YouTube
In March 2023, Tesla's chief financial officer at the time, Zachary Kirkhorn — who board members considered making Musk's successor before he unexpectedly resigned — received a death threat via email, according to 911 records and a sheriff's office incident report viewed by BI. The missive demanded $300,000 in bitcoin not to end his life.
The Travis County Sheriff's Office described the incident as a "terroristic threat" in its report, the documents show, though ultimately law enforcement believed it to be a scam.
Under Texas law, terroristic threats include threats of violence that are intended to put people in fear of imminent bodily injury, cause a reaction by an emergency agency, or interrupt a place of employment.
Other records from the sheriff's office obtained by BI show that at least five other 911 calls were made from Tesla's HQ between the opening of the Austin Gigafactory in April 2022 and January of this year for what law enforcement also categorized as terroristic threats. The sheriff's office is seeking to withhold the records for most of those incidents from BI.
An email sender claimed they were 'hired to kill' Kirkhorn if he didn't step down
In the case of Kirkhorn, a Tesla security officer at the Gigafactory initially called 911 at the time to report the incident, according to the records. The security officer told deputies that the CFO had gotten an email from someone claiming to have been "hired to kill you if you don't step down," the report provided to BI said.
"Wire $300,000 dollars to bitcoin account within 12 hours," the email to Kirkhorn added, according to the incident report.
The Tesla security officer told deputies the email was sent to multiple email addresses with variations of Kirkhorn's name, suggesting that the sender was attempting to guess his email address.
The security officer also said he believed it was the "first threat" that Kirkhorn received by email, according to the report.
In a second interview with deputies, the security officer told authorities his team was able to trace information in the threatening email back to Nigeria.
A Travis County Sheriff's Office spokesperson, Kristen Dark, confirmed to BI that the email was found to have originated from Nigeria and was thought to be spam.
"Based on the spam email mail address it is likely a scam attempt," the incident report read. "This was brought to Kirkhorn's attention and he was ok with just documenting the situation. No further action needed."
The case was ultimately suspended and no arrest was ever made, according to the incident report and Dark.
Tesla and Kirkhorn did not respond to requests for comment.
Cars on the assembly line at the Tesla Gigafactory in Austin.
SUZANNE CORDEIRO/Getty Images
Kirkhorn left Tesla last August after working at the carmaker for about 13 years. He held the title not only of CFO, but also "Master of Coin."
His departure came as a shock to some. The Wall Street Journal had reported earlier that year that Kirkhorn could be in line to become the next CEO of Tesla.
Other 911 calls related to a threat against Musk and a Tesla employee
One of the other 911 calls that the sheriff's office designated as a "terroristic threat" related to a report by a Tesla employee who said he was threatened in February 2023 by another worker while on the job. The suspect in that case was accused of threatening to pull the man off a forklift and "slap the shit" out of him, according to an incident report.
The employee who made the report told deputies that he had been "advised to allow Tesla Security to work the incident first before attempting to file a police report" but that he got "tired of waiting on Tesla," the documents show.
The case was closed after the accuser told deputies he no longer wished to pursue it, but he sought to get it reopened that July.
Some Tesla workers told BI that tight production deadlines and the intensity of the work could sometimes create a high-pressure environment.
"Every time they ramped up production, I felt like a frog in a boiling pot of water," one former worker from the Austin factory said. "You could just feel the stress level at the factory shoot up, and sometimes that meant people were more likely to pop off or act out."
Another 911 call that was made in January of this year and categorized as a terroristic threat related to a report of a Tesla employee threatening to kill Musk and US President Joe Biden. Travis County deputies responded to Tesla HQ at the time of the call.
A day later, Justin Mathew McCauley of Minnesota was arrestedon a felony charge of terroristic threat in connection to the incident. According to an arrest affidavit obtained by BI, security at Tesla alerted the Travis County Sheriff's Office of a threat made on McCauley's account on X, the social-media site owned by Musk.
"I will arrive in Texas, where the war has began on many fronts @X, @Tesla," one post said, according to the court documents. Another said, "@JoeBiden @X @Tesla @Elonmusk, I am planning to Kill all of you."
According to the court papers, McCauley's wife notified deputies in Minnesota after he told her he was going to Texas and never coming back.
McCauley was eventually stopped and arrested by Travis County deputies in Austin on January 28. He told them that he planned to go to the Gigafactory "to try and contact Elon Musk," the arrest affidavit says.
"Everything I did was completely insane. It seems like a bad dream," McCauley later told FOX 7 Austin in an on-camera interview. The 32-year-old former Tesla worker said he was in a state of "psychosis."
McCauley was jailed for roughly four weeks before he was released on bond March 1. His next court hearing in the case is scheduled for July 3. Attempts to reach McCauley on Monday and Tuesday were unsuccessful.
The details surrounding the other three 911 calls from Tesla's headquarters — which records show were made in November 2022, March 2023, and November 2023 — and the dispositions of those calls, were not provided to BI. The sheriff's office said in a letter sent to BI that the records fell under privacy and open-investigation exemptions to the public-records law and has asked the Office of the Attorney General of Texas to weigh in.
Dark, the Travis County Sheriff's Office spokesperson, told BI that the agency did not provide additional security services for the Tesla factory but would respond to emergencies there as it would any other location in the county.
"The Gigafactory is in our agency's jurisdiction and we respond to 911 calls for service," Dark said.
Tesla employees say security is thorough
Last July, the Travis County Sheriff's Office responded to a 911 call reporting an active shooter at the Austin Gigafactory. At the time, workers who were at the factory received a memo from Tesla telling them to take cover because of an "Active Attacker," two employees told BI.
"It was unsettling because no one really knew what was going on. We were just standing outside the building waiting to go back to work," one worker, who was there during the ordeal, told BI. The employee asked that they not be identified in this story, as they are not authorized to speak to the press, but BI has verified their employment.
The sheriff's office told local news at the time that the building was cleared and there was "nothing to substantiate the presence of a shooter at all."
The false alarm wasn't the first scare at a Tesla factory.
In 2021, a Tesla worker was fatally shot in the parking lot of the company's Fremont, California, factory after an altercation with a coworker who was later charged with murder.
Tesla has factories across the US, including this one in Fremont, California.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
In April, Tesla appeared to tighten security at some of its factories after Musk told the staff he planned to eliminate more than 10% of the workforce.
The day after the memo was sent out, some staff at Tesla's factory in Sparks, Nevada, waited in hours-long lines to get through a series of badge checks, and some workers found out they'd been laid off after security scanned their badges and sent them back home on shuttle buses, five current and former employees previously told BI.
Several Tesla workers told BI it would be difficult for anyone to bring in a weapon or unauthorized personnel to access the company's factories.
Factory workers in both Nevada and Texas go through at least three security checkpoints to enter their workplace, with badge checks on the shuttles in, and at the gate for those who drive into work, as well as at two separate points once they enter the building, four workers said.
Musk has spoken out about threats against his life.
Apu Gomes via Getty Images
Musk has previously indicated his worries about personal safety
Musk has expressed concern about his personal safety multiple times over the years and even talked about dying "under mysterious circumstances."
The billionaire has also repeatedly attempted to take down a social-media account that tracked his private jet travels, even threatening to sue the college student who ran the account after Musk said his son X had been followed by a "crazy stalker" because of the jet-tracking account.
BI previously reported that Musk secretly bought a house in 2022 after the address of a house he'd been renting became public knowledge and Musk found it to be "no longer private and secure for my family." A neighbor told BI earlier this year that the home had around-the-clock security.
From December 2023 to February, Tesla shelled out about $3 million to Musk's security company, which represented only "a portion of the total cost of security services concerning Elon Musk," according to an SEC filing.
Security costs can include measures as varied as personal bodyguards or private planes, and Musk is one of many prominent executives spending millions over security concerns.
In 2023, Meta approved a $14 million security allowance for its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. The company spent over $24 million on expenses associated with Zuckerberg, including security and private travel, an SEC filing shows.
Meta said in the filing that Zuckerberg had become "one of the most recognized executives in the world" and needed to be protected as a result. The company's longtime chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg was also given a security budget.
Tesla and Musk's other companies seem to have taken a similar approach. Last year, an engineer at Twitter, the social-media site that became known as X, told the BBC that Musk was followed around the company's headquarters by at least two bodyguards at all times.
"It is getting a little crazy these days," Musk said at the June 13 Tesla shareholder meeting. "To first approximation, the probability that a homicidal maniac will try to kill you is proportionate to how many homicidal maniacs hear your name."
"So they hear my name a lot — I'm like, OK, I'm on the list, you know," Musk said, laughing.
"Think of John Lennon who was singing about, 'Hey, can't we all just be nice to each other,' and then he got shot by one of his fans," Musk said. "Like, OK, we'll try to avoid that."
Rivian's R2 could be the lower-cost SUV model that consumers seem to be clamoring for.
Rivian
Volkswagen will invest up to $5 billion in Rivian, an EV maker that's struggled with profitability.
Rivian, which lost $1.4 billion in the first quarter, aims to develop a more affordable SUV.
Rivian's new $45,000 SUV, the R2, set to launch in 2026, targets mainstream customers.
Volkswagen just inked a deal to invest up to $5 billion in Rivian, the electric-vehicle maker that has, like its peers, struggled to turn a profit.
The deal, announced Tuesday, creates a joint venture focused on developing software to be used in both companies' cars. It also affords Rivian, which lost $1.4 billion in the first quarter, a financial cushion to continue developing a much cheaper SUV.
The partnership is expected to "lower cost per vehicle by increasing scale and speeding up innovation globally," the joint announcement said.
Software is one of Rivian's strengths, Goldman Sachs analysts noted in January — "a key part of the value proposition and monetization opportunity for Rivian."
But the company has struggled to sell more cars profitably. It's still just a small slice of the overall EV market. Rivian delivered nearly 14,000 cars in the first quarter, compared with Tesla's almost 390,000.
The race to create cheaper EVs is heating up across the industry, as car makers confront an affordability problem that has narrowed the potential buyer pool.
Rivian's current SUV costs nearly $80,000. In March, the company introduced two smaller SUVs designed to reach more mainstream customers.
"These represent our future," CEO RJ Scaringe said of the new models.
One of the models, called the R2, is slated to launch in 2026 and will cost $45,000, about the same as Tesla's Model Y.
The R2 "will be foundational to Rivian's long-term growth and profit potential," the company said in its first-quarter earnings report.
Tesla has been teasing a $25,000 electric vehicle for years. Last year, Tesla's top engineers told investors that the company's next generation of electric models would cost 50% less to make. But the production road has been bumpy — last month, Tesla pulled back on plans to roll out a new manufacturing method for its electric cars, Reuters reported.
In April, Ford CEO Jim Farley said the company is working on new affordable EVs that could be priced as low as $25,000 to $30,000.
The Volkswagen news sent Rivian shares up 50% in after-hours trading.
Last year, New York City began enforcing its near-ban on short-term rentals, including Airbnbs.
As of June 24, there are just 2,276 legal short-term rentals, according to the city government.
City officials say the law aims to ease the housing affordability crisis and boost the hotel industry.
Last September, New York City began enforcing its strict new regulations on short-term rentals. Since then, the number of legal short-term rentals listed on Airbnb and other platforms has plummeted.
Less than a year into the city's policy, known as Local Law 18, it's not clear whether the near-ban is achieving one of its central goals: relieving pressure on the city's severe housing shortage. But as summer tourism heats up, the dearth of rentals and rising hotel room prices mean visitors to the city are in for an even pricier trip than they likely bargained for.
Under LL18, someone can rent out their home for less than 30 days only if their unit is in an approved building, they rent to a maximum of two guests at a time, and they stay in the home with their guests, among other restrictions. Potential hosts have to apply for approval from the Office of Special Enforcement under the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice.
The city opened its application portal in March 2023, and as of June 24, it has received 6,395 total applications for short-term rentals, according to OSE. The city has approved 2,276 of these, denied 1,746, and asked 2,269 applicants to submit additional information, the office said.
That small number of approvals has led to a dramatic decline in short-term listings since last year, according to AirDNA, a collector of industry data. Between August and September of last year, when the city began enforcing LL18, Airbnb listings for stays of less than 30 days plummeted from 22,246 to 8,039. They fell again to a low of 2,646 in October, but have slowly climbed since then to nearly 4,000 in May, around 82% below the level last August.
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We want to hear from you: Are you an Airbnb host in NYC who's been impacted by the new regulations? Have you been affected by a loss of income? Have you converted a short-term rental to a long-term one? Are you still finding ways to rent unlisted? Tell us your story about how the new rules are affecting you in this form.
At the same time, the number of Airbnb listings for stays longer than 30 days rose rapidly. Many of these new, medium-term rentals were simply converted from short-term, AirDNA's chief economist, Jamie Lane, told Business Insider.
"When we actually looked at the total number of listings on Airbnb, from October, once the dust had settled, to pre-law going into effect, it was only about a 14% decline," Lane said.
The vast majority of New York City's short-term rental inventory is listed on Airbnb, while a small portion of it is on Vrbo and Booking.com, according to Lane.
The city hasn't begun fining hosts for violating LL18. It's working with Airbnb and other short-term rental companies to ensure they're in compliance before it begins cracking down.
"That's resulted in a massive reduction in illegal listings across the major platforms," Christian Klossner, executive director of the Office of Special Enforcement, told Business Insider. "This law was not about new fines for people. This law was about preventing it at the source, and that's what we've done."
The city won't say how many short-term rentals it's found that violate LL18, but says it will publish that number in its annual report in September. However, the OSE attorney said the city is continuing to conduct inspections based on complaints and issue fines for violations of long-standing rental regulations.
The city has long banned homeowners from renting out entire units for less than 30 days, but it didn't have the power to enforce these regulations until LL18 was passed.
Impacts of the near-ban
LL18 was motivated by the city's housing affordability crisis, caused in large part by a severe housing shortage. Pro-housing supporters of LL18 argue New York City needs to prioritize homes over hotel rooms.
"Illegal short-term rental operators hurt our hospitality industry and make it harder for New Yorkers to find affordable housing, and we must ensure we are holding them accountable," New York City Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement this past March.
Short-term rentals, including Airbnbs, can take homes that would otherwise be lived in full-time off the market, potentially exacerbating the housing shortage. The city's home vacancy rate is 1.4%, the lowest in over 50 years, according to a recent city report. It can also help inflate home prices and rents.
The main lobby of New York City's Waldorf Astoria Hotel on February 24, 2017.
TIMOTHY A. CLARY/Getty Images
Former City Comptroller Scott Stringer found in a 2018 report that for every 1% of all homes in a New York City neighborhood listed on Airbnb, rent in that neighborhood went up by 1.58%. "Between 2009 and 2016, approximately 9.2 percent of the citywide increase in rental rates can be attributed to Airbnb," the report found.
But Airbnb and other critics say the near-ban won't do much to address the housing crisis while hurting homeowners who relied on the rental income and visitors who can't afford sky-high hotel costs. There are a slew of factors — from new housing construction to migration patterns — that impact housing costs and vacancy rates. But there's some evidence, including from Irvine, California, that restricting short-term rentals can reduce rents. It's not clear how much of a role LL18 has played so far in changing these conditions.
The hotel industry has seen its revenue soar recently. Occupancy rates hit 82% last year, while the national average sits at 63% after falling to 47% in 2020. The average room price reached a record $301 per night, up 8.5% since 2022. The vacancy decline and price surge are likely both a result of the disappearance of so many short-term rentals and the fact that about 20% of city hotel rooms are currently being used to shelter migrants, among other factors.
"It's not surprising to me that you remove 20,000 short-term rentals, and all of a sudden, hotel rates are going up by 10%," Lane said.
Airbnb sued the city to prevent LL18 from going into effect but lost in court last August. "New York City's short-term rental rules have significantly reduced accommodation options for visitors and contributed to higher hotel prices that are making it more expensive to visit the Big Apple," Nathan Rotman, Airbnb's northeast policy lead, said in a statement to Business Insider. "More importantly, the rules haven't improved housing affordability in the city— rents continue to rise and housing stock has reached historic lows."
Some Airbnb hosts say the measures go too far, choking small-time hosts who rely on the extra income, even though the original target was much bigger empires.
"I see these buildings on Central Park with penthouses that are empty because nobody can pay millions for apartments like that. But here I am fighting to stay in New York in my pre-war walkup building," the owner, who remained anonymous for privacy reasons, told Business Insider.
Americans are increasingly feeling like their jobs are meaningless. It could be why they aren't engaged at work.
Ricardo Tomás for BI
American workers are not all right.
While news about "quiet quitters" spread like wildfire in 2022, things have actually gotten worse in America's workplaces since that viral trend lost steam. Engagement at work has hit an 11-year low, Gallup's long-running survey of US employees found — in February only 30% of US workers reported being fully engaged with their jobs. Plenty of ink has been spilled trying to understand the causes of this growing crisis. Is it remote work? Layoffs? An increasing lack of loyalty among employers?
One possibility that hasn't been as widely discussed is a fundamental problem with the work that people are being asked to do. For some people, their job can be a source of meaning and fulfillment, but for others, it's simply the thing that pays the bills. In a 2021 YouGov survey, only about half of Americans said they felt that their job made "a meaningful contribution to the world" — and the feeling was lowest among millennials and Gen Zers.
A 2021 survey by Pew Research looked at the question another way: It asked people from around the world what made their lives meaningful. In countries such as Italy, Spain, and Sweden, work ranked highly as a source of meaning. In Italy, work was the No. 1 source of meaning, with 43% saying they drew meaning from work. Spaniards ranked work higher than family. But in the US, only 17% mentioned work as a source of meaning. That was a sharp decline from when Pew asked the same question four years prior — a full one-third of Americans mentioned their jobs as a source of meaning in 2017, double the 2021 rate. Increasingly, it seems that more people feel like their jobs don't matter.
And when people feel like their jobs don't matter, they tend to feel unfulfilled by them. In the YouGov survey, 56% of people who said they found no meaning in their job also said they felt unfulfilled by it. By contrast, 88% of people who believed their job was meaningful said they felt fulfilled by it.
In other words, the work-engagement crisis might actually be a crisis of meaning.
Research has for decades found that job satisfaction and engagement track with whether someone can find meaning in their work. The American Psychological Association highlights findings that people who find their jobs meaningful are more engaged, show up to work more, and are healthier. A 2022 survey by Great Place To Work, a workplace-culture firm that measures employee well-being, found that staff retention and job satisfaction were higher at companies where employees felt their jobs had meaning. In particular, the survey found that millennials and women were three times as likely to stay at a job that they considered "more than just a job." Other research has found that employees, especially Gen Zers, are more likely to quit jobs they don't find meaningful.
Some jobs naturally lend themselves to a sense of meaning: In the YouGov survey, those who worked in healthcare, social assistance, or education were the most likely to say that their work was meaningful. In those fields, day-to-day tasks bear a significant impact on other people and the world at large. But other sectors struggle to instill in their staff that what they do all day matters: People in sales, media, communications, and real estate rated their jobs among the least meaningful.
Many in those industries have begun to refer to their work as "fake email jobs" — office jobs that largely involve sending emails without producing anything. One anonymous worker recently told the online news site Bustle about his "fake email job" as a video producer. "I've gone weeks doing nothing to see how far I could push it," he told the site. "The only reason I stopped is that I got bored, not because someone asked me to do something."
Working a useless job is a 'profound psychological violence,' Graeber wrote.
Other people have managed to juggle multiple full-time remote jobs thanks to the limited amount of work each job actually required. In some cases, people say the low effort required is a positive — who wouldn't want a steady paycheck with minimal work requirements? But others end up feeling frustrated and wish they could be doing something more productive.
The idea of meaningless work extends back much further than the fake-email-jobs meme. The academic David Graeber coined the term "bullshit jobs" in 2013 to describe jobs where, he wrote, "the person doing it believes it pointless, and if the job didn't exist it would either make no difference whatsoever or it would make the world a better place." In his 2018 book, Graeber outlined 21 occupational groups that he believed were useless based on surveys he conducted on how people felt about their jobs. The roles included positions in administrative support, sales, business and finance, and management. Working a useless job is a "profound psychological violence," Graeber wrote, one that removes any sense of dignity and fosters "deep rage and resentment."
Last year, Simon Walo, a postdoctoral student at the University of Zurich, looked deeper into Graeber's theory — did people who worked these "bullshit jobs" really feel worse about them than those in other occupations? He analyzed data from a 2015 American Working Conditions Survey and found that people working in certain positions did tend to feel worse about their jobs.
"Working in one of Graeber's occupations significantly increases the probability that workers perceive their job as socially useless (compared with all others)," Walo said.
But other researchers don't think that means those jobs are actually useless — the negative feelings stem more from a problem with the work environment than from the work itself, they argue. Brendan Burchell, a professor of social sciences at the University of Cambridge, coauthored a study in 2021 that critiqued Graeber's theory.
"We looked at that small number of people who felt that their job was useless, and we looked at what was causing it or what correlated," Burchell told me.
The study found that factors such as bad managers, how connected you are to coworkers, and whether your employer is providing a public good significantly influence whether your job feels meaningful. And Walo's study agreed: A poor work environment comes to bear on whether work feels useful.
Often, a lack of meaning on the job simply comes down to bad management. In Burchell's study, he and his coauthors compiled several years of survey results that focused on whether people felt they were doing useful work. They found that those who felt "respected and encouraged by management" were less likely to report their work as useless and that those who felt their jobs were useful said that they were able to contribute their own ideas at work. Other factors, like having enough time to get things done, being able to influence important decisions, and approving of the direction of the company also correlated with the feeling that a job was meaningful. On the flip side, people felt their jobs were useless when they didn't get the chance to use and develop their skills.
"People expressed the feeling that they were disrespected or not listened to by their manager," Burchell said. "We also found this response from people who are working under a lot of time pressure or in stressful jobs."
A UK biopharmaceutical worker who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his job oversees the safety of clinical trials at his company. His job is not meaningless — his work directly protects patients involved in clinical trials. However, there are many aspects of how the job is managed that cause him to feel that it's "pointless" and a "waste of time," he said.
"The company is out there to make money," he said, "and no matter what the people at the top of the pyramid say about patient safety, they are ultimately profit-driven."
Often, a lack of meaning on the job simply comes down to bad management.
Bureaucracy and paperwork eat up a large amount of his time, which he said often dilutes the meaning of his job or, on bad days, strips it away completely. Spending more time looking at data and less time looking at how his work is impacting patients takes away much of the meaning he wishes he could find in his job.
Clay Routledge, an existential psychologist and director at the Human Flourishing Lab, said that an employer's top priority should be making the work itself more meaningful for its staff, whatever their role or level. "A notable strategy for doing this is recognizing people's contribution to the company at every level. Managers should think about how their team members serve their customers or clients, and they can do that explicitly in job descriptions, company communications, and evaluations," he said.
When nothing changes, people start looking for the exits. A 2019 study found self-employed workers — who get to be more in control of their time and work — viewed their work as more useful to society than traditionally employed workers did. That could explain why more people are setting out on their own. From 2020 to 2023, the number of self-employed workers in the US rose by about 400,000. And Americans are filing 59% more applications to start businesses than before 2020.
"If you look at the paths people go down to pursue meaning, some of it relates to differences in personality: Some people are really career-ambitious, and their sense of self is very much tied to that," Routledge said. For others, their ambitions may lie elsewhere: creative endeavors, family, or community work, for instance. Working for yourself gives you more flexibility to pursue the things you actually find meaningful, Routledge said. It also allows you to ditch a toxic office environment.
Short of everyone quitting to become their own CEO, employers will need to figure out how to make work feel meaningful for their staff. As the Burchell study summarized, "If managers are respectful, supportive and listen to workers, and if workers have the opportunities for participation, to use their own ideas and have time to do a good job, they are less likely to feel that their work is useless." Without this kind of improvement, America seems doomed to a slow spiral of declining engagement.
Molly Lipson is a freelance writer and an organizer from the UK.
That intensity has been well documented at Amazon, and now increasingly at Walmart as the world's largest retailer beefs up its e-commerce operation.
"So you take a distribution center today, one of our associates is walking up to 10 miles a day, lifting thousands of pounds, moving pallets and things like that," Walmart CFO John David Rainey said Tuesday at Bank of America's London Investor Conference.
And all that distance and weight really adds up over the course of a person's career, potentially forcing them to leave the workforce earlier than they might otherwise prefer.
Walmart typically employs about 1,000 workers at each of its 42 regional distribution centers, which are sprawling warehouses of up to 1.5 million square feet that support its 4,600 US stores.
Walmart is now adding automation to that fleet of facilities, and though some workers may worry about losing their jobs to machines, Rainey says retrieval robots and forklifts are actually lightening the load in a meaningful way for workers.
"The feedback that we get from many of our associates is that we add as much as 10 years to their career because of the less manual-intensive nature of this work," he said.
Now, instead of a worker jogging a 5K before lunch, picking orders across 26 football fields worth of shelves, a robot can make the trip.
Not only that, the retrieval robots learn how to navigate the route more efficiently, saving time on the next loop, Rainey said.
Taken together, these automations are driving a fourfold increase in how much stuff a distribution center can process with the same number of workers, Rainey said previously.
Walmart's situation closely resembles that of Amazon, which has doubled the number of robots deployed in its fulfillment centers and warehouses in the last three years, including a humanoid robot named Digit.
Walmart's Rainey would likely agree with Amazon's director of global robotics, Stefano La Rovere, who told CNBC that "robots and technology help our employees … by reducing walking distance between assignments, by taking away repetitive motions, or helping them to lift heavy weights."
"That's something that we're very focused on," Rainey said, "doing this automation in a very associate-friendly way that becomes a complement to what they're doing and actually enhances their overall job experience."
If you are a Walmart employee who would like to share your perspective, please contact Dominick via email or text/call/Signal at 646.768.4750. Responses will be kept confidential, but Business Insider strongly recommends using a personal email and a non-work device when reaching out.
Ashley Archambault found creative ways to enjoy summers with her son as a single mom on a budget.
Courtesy Ashley Archambault
I was on summer break at the same time as my son, and I loved spending time with him.
But I was also a single mom on a budget, and had to get creative about what we did.
I couldn't afford summer camp or fancy vacations, but we spent plenty of time outside.
As a single mom, a big reason I became a teacher was so that I would be on the same schedule as my son. He would be at school while I would be at work, and I would be on break when he was.
I wanted to spend as much time with my son as possible, but I was also on a budget. The cost of childcare or summer camps would have been an additional expense I wanted to avoid. After the monthly bills, I didn't have a lot of money left over for extracurriculars or expensive trips during our summer breaks.
I had always worked hard to find a way for my son not to miss out on what I thought he deserved, like healthy meals or quality clothing and shoes. I got good at making my budget work for us and learned how to get the best deals on the things we needed, even if that required me to get creative.
As my son was getting older, I decided to extend these financial principles to our summers and figure out how I could provide him with camp-like experiences and summer vacations without really having the money to do so.
I looked at what we could do with the things we had
First, I figured out what we could do with what we already had, like inviting friends over for playdates or going to their houses for the same. I began to find that simply changing our scenery was enough to make ordinary everyday activities feel new and exciting. So, I expanded on this idea and started packing our dinners for evening picnics in the park.
To this day, my son looks back fondly on spreading the blanket out over the grass and unpacking the basket with delight. The dinner we would have had anyway was elevated into an event that cost no money at all.
Ashley Archambault took her son on picnics in the park during the summertime.
Courtesy Ashley Archambault
I looked for free activities around town
After making our home life more eventful, I started thinking of what we could do around town for free. I already used the library as a resource during holidays, such as taking advantage of their trick-or-treating on Halloween.
A youth librarian once told me that when the school doors close for summer, the library doors open, which is why they offer extensive summer programming. Through our local libraries, my son attended bicycle rodeos, cooking classes, and even a dog circus, all for free. Going home with a new stack of books on whatever subject he was interested in at the time was a nice bonus, too.
We spent a lot of time outside
We spent mornings at the beach together, found hiking trails in our own backyard, and spent a lot of time outside together. Spending a lot of time in nature provided us with numerous benefits: an appreciation for where we lived, an education on the importance of protecting wildlife and our environment, and a sense of having been on a real adventure. It was also lovely to come home and take a nap or cuddle up on the couch to watch a movie after we had spent the first half of the day outdoors.
For experiences like fishing, going out on a boat, or sitting around a campfire, I looked to our friends and family. I never had to look far to find someone who was willing to provide a fishing lesson, take us out on their boat, or invite us over to sit around the fire pit and discover the thrilling combination of a roasted marshmallow, melted chocolate, and crunchy graham crackers.
Ashley Archambault and her son enjoyed spending time outside during summers together.
Courtesy Ashley Archambault
I took friends up on generous offers to give my son summer vacations
In order to travel a little farther, I looked again to our loved ones. My grandmother, who was a snowbird and spent her summers up north, often invited me to spend a night or two at her beachside apartment a short drive away from us, so I accepted her offer. Packing our bags, sleeping somewhere else, and waking up to just be lazy really felt like being on vacation.
I also had an aunt who often invited us to stay with her at her lakeside cabin in Vermont. That ended up being our first big trip, and the only expense I had was purchasing the plane tickets. My son got to fly on a plane, go canoeing on the lake, and camp out in a tent. Our family's invitations removed the expense of lodging, so all I had to do was accept and cover the cost of getting us there.
While I could have remained fixated on saving money or feeling left out of expensive vacations that I saw others enjoying, I focused instead on what I could give my son with what we had available. And instead of sending him off to camp and hearing about his summer when he returned, I got to experience all of it by his side, and that is what I feel most grateful for.
Polishing the Cybertruck's stainless steel surface to a mirror-like sheen has become something of a trend among owners of Tesla's famously brutalistic truck.
Cybertruck owner Tyson Garvin previously told Business Insider that polishing his truck made it less of a fingerprint magnet, with the Cybertruck's brushed steel exterior notorious for smudging easily.
Turning a 600-horsepower pickup truck into a moving mirror has raised obvious safety concerns, with some social media users suggesting that the modifications may make the Cybertruck effectively invisible in some situations.
Experts previously told BI that polishing your Cybertruck in this way is unlikely to be illegal.
However, they warned that it wasn't the safest thing to do either, with the ultra-reflective surface less likely to pose a risk than the strong chance that other drivers may be distracted by the highly unusual vehicle.
The polished Cybertruck seems to be the latest to come onto the resale market, eight months after Elon Musk oversaw the first deliveries of the much-delayed vehicle at a glitzy event in Texas.
A top-of-the-line foundation series Cybertruck sold for $244,000 in February, more than $130,000 over its initial sticker price. Tesla charges a $50,000 resale fee for owners of foundation series Cybertruck models who sell within a year.
The company does appear to have scaled up production of the pickup, with Musk telling shareholders earlier this month that Tesla was now producing around 1,300 Cybertrucks a week.