1. Gig economy may create over a million jobs in FY26, taking the total workforce to 14 million.
According to data from TeamLease Services, ecom and qcom are likely to add nearly 1 million jobs this year, followed by the logistics and warehousing sector. Balasubramanian A, senior vice president, TeamLease, said: “Qcom and ecom are estimated to generate 900,000 to 1 million jobs as they expand into Tier-II, -III cities; logistics and warehousing are expected to create nearly 500,000 roles driven by new multi-modal parks and electric vehicle fleets.” A similar trend was evident last year (CY25) when ecom and qcom firms created 600,000 jobs, logistics players generated 400,000, and the banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) sector added nearly 200,000 new gig roles for field sales and digital verification. Similarly, data from jobs and career platform Apna, for financial year 2026-27, said that hiring is expected to be driven largely by qcom expansion into Tier-II and Tier-III cities with around a million jobs. Kartik Narayan, chief executive officer of jobs marketplace at Apna, said: “The top three sectors— qcom, retail, and logistics — will continue to dominate the space. Qcom would add nearly 1 million jobs and logistics may generate approximately 500,000-700,000 jobs.”
On wages
On whether an increase in demand will lead to a rise in salaries or incentives of gig workers, Apna said, “Salaries are variable payout given the job but are approximately between ₹12,000-₹25,000 with the mean being ₹15,000 for nearly 40 per cent of these employees. Gig worker payouts might remain flattish due to intense competition and any increase would be attributed to incentivising festival period delivery and other holidays than the actual pay-out per delivery.”
2. Sanae Takaichi wins the largest majority for the LDP in the 465-seat Japanese lower house since its formation in 1955, securing 310 seats in the snap polls. The result saw the Nikkei rise sharply and bond yield climb in expectation of increased borrowings to fund Takaichi's committed spending program.
3. Contrary to all the talk of a declining US economy, investors are flocking to US assets.
Last year foreigners poured around $1.6tn into US financial assets, including nearly $700bn into stocks, both new records and significantly higher than the levels of recent years. The story is much the same for US corporate bonds, with foreign purchases up sharply... From Singapore to Seoul, they are staying up all night to trade on increasingly popular after-hours US trading platforms. Among the few foreigners sitting out this buying spree were central banks, which have been moving money from the dollar into gold... Foreign institutions alone now own nearly 15 per cent of US stocks, a record share and up by half from the level a decade ago... Notwithstanding all the America bashing, foreigners now own nearly $70tn in US assets, double the level a decade ago. And in the last year, most of those flows arrived as “hot money”. Foreign direct investment in factories and businesses, which cannot withdraw quickly, was much weaker than portfolio flows into assets such as stocks and bonds, which can reverse in an instant.
4. US plans tariff carve-outs to chip makers, especially the likes of TSMC, who make investments in the US.
The size of the potential rebate programme would be linked to the recent US-Taiwan trade agreement. The White House has agreed to slash tariffs on imports from the island to 15 per cent in exchange for a $250bn investment in the chip industry in the US. Under the deal, Taiwanese companies including TSMC that invest in the US will be exempt from the forthcoming tariffs in proportion to their planned US capacity. The White House said it would allow Taiwanese companies building semiconductor plants in the US to import 2.5 times the new facilities’ planned capacity tariff-free during the construction period, according to an outline of the trade deal released by the commerce department. Taiwanese companies that have already built plants in the US will be allowed to import 1.5 times their capacity. TSMC would be able to allocate the exemptions it earns under the trade deal to its Big Tech clients in the US, allowing them to import chips from the company tariff-free. The size and scope of the rebates for US hyperscalers depend on the production capacity that TSMC forecasts it can reach in the US in coming years.
5. China is treating data as an asset.
In 2024, China became the first country to allow enterprises to classify data as intangible assets on their balance sheets. Beijing had already declared data a “factor of production” alongside land, labour, capital and technology. The National Data Administration now oversees dozens of data exchanges. China Unicom, one of the world’s largest mobile operators, reported Rmb204mn ($29mn) in assets in its first filing under the new rules. The motivation isn’t purely philosophical. Local government financing vehicles — the off-balance-sheet entities Chinese municipalities use to fund infrastructure — are drowning in debt. Some use data as collateral for fresh loans.
6. The rising Apple margins
7. Mirroring the changing trends, as EV sales slump across the US, EV battery plants are being converted into energy storage systems (ESS) for the surging demand to power data centres. Sample this
Tesla, which incorporates batteries from a range of suppliers including CATL and LG into its Megapack and Powerwall energy storage systems, reported that energy and generation storage revenues grew 27 per cent year-on-year to $12.8bn — up from $2.8bn in 2021, while its revenues from EV sales fell 9 per cent to $64bn. The shift to ESS has been accelerated by weakening government support for EVs, after the Trump administration slashed tax credits established in the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act and moved to cut tailpipe emission rules and state clean-air standards intended to encourage drivers to switch to EVs... These policy rollbacks led analysts at BloombergNEF to revise down their forecast for EVs’ total share of 2030 car sales from 48 per cent to 27 per cent. EVs currently account for about 8 per cent of US new car sales. Stellantis is selling its 49 per cent stake in a battery plant just over the Detroit River in Windsor, Ontario, to Korean battery giant LG for just $100, after the European car group announced a €22bn writedown last week tied to its aggressive expansion into EVs. It had invested $980mn in the Windsor facility...
While the administration has cut consumer tax credits for EVs, President Donald Trump’s flagship One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed last year retained generous production credits for battery manufacturers. They include a $35 per kilowatt-hour manufacturing credit for battery production, and a 30 per cent investment tax credit for energy storage that will be phased out starting in the 2030s. The credits, along with US tariffs on Chinese energy storage batteries of close to 60 per cent, mean ESS cells can be produced in the US at prices close to parity with the Chinese imports that dominate the market.
8. Migrants make a disproportionately large share of successful US startup founders.
Some 44 per cent of the 1,078 founders who created a US tech start-up valued at more than $1bn between 1997 and 2019 were born outside the country, according to a Stanford Graduate School of Business study. The top five grey matter exporters to the US were India, Israel, Canada, the UK and China.
9. AK Bhattacharya points to some facts about the Government of India's capital expenditure trends.
Between 2005 and 2020, a period of 15 years, capital expenditure crossed 2 per cent of GDP only twice — in 2007-08 and in 2010-11... Between 2020-21 and 2024-25, she grew capex by 26 per cent on average every year... As a percentage of GDP, capital expenditure rose from 1.67 per cent in 2019-20 to 3.2 per cent in 2024-25... Interest-free 50-year loans to states... in 2020-21... accounted for only 2.8 per cent of the total capex outlay of the Centre. Over the years, this share has gone up and, in 2025-26, it was 13 per cent and is set to go up to 15 per cent in 2026-27... Almost 41 to 52 per cent of the government’s capital outlay is allocated to PSUs. In other words, the Union government depends not just on the states for executing its capex plan, but also on PSUs... almost half of the government’s capex is dependent on providing equity and loans to PSUs.
10. Martin Sandbu points to Michael Sandel's prophetic warning in 1996 in his book, Democracy's Discontent.
“To the extent that contemporary politics puts sovereign states and sovereign selves in question, it is likely to provoke reactions from those who would banish ambiguity, shore up borders, harden the distinction between insiders and outsiders and promise a politics to ‘take back our culture and take back our country’, to ‘restore our sovereignty’ with a vengeance.”
11. London has the lowest new housebuilding among all major cities in the world!
London has been set a target of building 88,000 new homes per year over the next decade. Last year construction started on just 5,891 — 94 per cent below target, a 75 per cent year-on-year decline, the steepest drop in the country, the lowest tally since records began almost 40 years ago and the lowest figure for any major city in the developed world this century... New starts by private developers were down 79 per cent over the past two years, compared with collapses of 85 and 94 per cent for affordable and council housing respectively, with work started on just 100 council-funded homes in 2024-25 by one estimate.
This is a good example of how well-intentioned policies to discourage foreign investors from buying up properties in London (and thereby squeeze out the local residents) may have had a perverse impact.
Such investors are frequently blamed for worsening affordability, but a 2017 report led by the LSE’s Kath Scanlon found that these investors “had a positive net effect on the availability to Londoners of new housing, both private and affordable”, warning that “there would be real costs to the London housing market if overseas investment . . . began to feel unwelcome”. That is precisely what has happened over a decade of increased charges on owners of second homes and foreign investors.
This about the regulatory layers added in response to the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire.
This has taken two forms: significant costs of upgrading existing homes to new standards, and the introduction of a new body — the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) — which has added a lengthy and exacting step between planning approval and starting construction, with inadequate resources quickly creating a logjam. This has placed a particular squeeze on the finances of affordable housing providers, who cite “additional costs and delays as a result of new building safety regulations” as a key reason for low build rates, leaving £120mn worth of council-funded homes on hold. Tens of thousands of provisionally approved homes in the capital are waiting on supplementary review by the BSR, which green-lights only a third of cases and takes an average of eight months to do so. These delays — at a point when developers have typically already poured large sums into a project — add huge financing overheads, in some cases expanding projects’ overall cost by more than 15 per cent. Adding to these are enhanced environmental regulations that are far more stringent than those in other European countries and levies requiring developers to invest in local infrastructure.
12. Tej Parikh has an excellent graphical summary that explains how the combination of an extended period of monetary and fiscal accommodation has led to plentiful cheap financing, eroded financial market discipline, kept zombie companies going, lowered business entry and exit, delayed recessions, and led to the accumulation of ever-increasing risks across the economy.
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