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On Tuesday, New Yorkers lined up to cast their vote in the city’s Democratic primaries, hoping to elect its next mayoral candidate nominee. But while some turned to the polls, others took to election bettingand made thousands along the way. In the weeks before the election, the race seemed to be between two candidates: former governor Andrew Cuomo, who left office following sexual harassment allegations in 2021, and state assemblyman and democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani. As votes started to kick in on Tuesday for the first round of the ranked-choice election, the race seemed uncertain. Early polling showed Cuomo leading the way by at least a 12-point lead weeks before. Yet tides quickly shifted, with a recent Emerson poll showing a statistical tie between the candidates. As the votes were counted, Mamdani surged as the likely nominee with Cuomo conceding later in the night. But before that happened, the internet had already crowned its winner on the prediction market trading platform Kalshi, where U.S. users can bet on current events like yesterday’s elections. “Zohran had one of the most impressive runs we’ve ever seen on Kalshi,” Jack Such, business and media development lead at Kalshi, told Fast Company. “He was at 7% to win this earlier, less than a month ago.” What is election betting? Election betting is like betting on any other current events, positing the probability of one event happening over another. Still, it is a somewhat recent phenomenon. Kalshi operates like a stock market, with two parties on each side, some buying or selling sharesor bets in this case. Each “yes” or “no” contract is capped at $1 dollar, usually going between zero and 99 cents, with the price reflecting the probability of an event happening according the bets. Election betting gained notoriety during last year’s presidential election, bringing in upwards of $3.6 billion to Polymarket, another betting platform that supposedly does not allow U.S. users. While criticism surrounds the ethics of the practice, as some argue that it may commodify decision-making and it does not promote responsible participation, it seems as if it is poised to grow. Just a day after the New York election, Kalshi hit a $2 billion valuation following a recent funding round. Additionally, the live aspect of the projection is attracting the attention of users yearning for faster results. Kalshi’s projection showed Mamdani surpassing Cuomo as soon as 9 a.m. that morning. While the projection fluctuated during the day, the platform called the election in favor of Mamdani at 9:43 p.m. on social media, before Cuomo conceded. “People who just want to know who wins love the markets because they just work faster than anything else,” Such says. Kalshi calls a victory once one of the sides reaches 99 cents for at least 10 minutes. “It’s basically like a 99% confidence interval,” Such says. “It indicates that this market is going to resolve a certain way.” High returns For those who jumped on the election market and bet on Mamdani early, returns will prove financially beneficial should Mamdani become the Democratic nominee for mayor as expected. The best single trade for the market will see a payout of $85,650, as the trader bet $3,426 in favor of Mamdani when his probability to win was just 4%. Another user commented on the market saying, “I want to thank all the unimaginative centrists out there,” following his $41,099 payout. During the election, the market had a live voting count powered by Decision Desk HQ, showcasing voting results in real time for users to follow. However, not all bets are made solely based on polls and electoral results, Such explained. For instance, Kalshi reported that 71% of pro-Mamdani bets were placed by women users, echoing the popular “hot girls for Zohran” grassroots movement. “What makes prediction markets efficient is this ability to aggregate all the information that’s available,” Such says. “like polling data, but also everything else: sentiment, what your neighbors think, what your family thinks.”
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While completing a master’s degree in data analysis, Palwasha Zahid moved from Dallas to a town near Silicon Valley. The location made it easy to visit the campuses of tech stalwarts such as Google, Apple, and Nvidia.Zahid, 25, completed her studies in December, but so far she hasn’t found a job in the industry that surrounds her.“It stings a little bit,” she said. “I never imagined it would be this difficult just to get a foot in the door.”Young people graduating from college this spring and summer are facing one of the toughest job markets in more than a decade. The unemployment rate for degree holders ages 22 to 27 has reached its highest level in a dozen years, excluding the coronavirus pandemic. Joblessness among that group is now higher than the overall unemployment rate, and the gap is larger than it has been in more than three decades.The rise in unemployment has worried many economists as well as officials at the Federal Reserve because it could be an early sign of trouble for the economy. It suggests businesses are holding off on hiring new workers because of rampant uncertainty stemming from the Trump administration’s tariff increases, which could slow growth.“Young people are bearing the brunt of a lot of economic uncertainty,” Brad Hersbein, senior economist at the Upjohn Institute, a labor-focused think tank, said. “The people that you often are most hesitant in hiring when economic conditions are uncertain are entry-level positions.”The growth of artifical intelligence may be playing an additional role by eating away at positions for beginners in white-collar professions such as information technology, finance, and law.Higher unemployment for younger graduates has also renewed concerns about the value of a college degree. More workers than ever have a four-year degree, which makes it less of a distinguishing factor in job applications. Murat Tasci, an economist at JPMorgan, calculates that 45% of workers have a four-year degree, up from 26% in 1992.While the difficulty of finding work has demoralized young people like Zahid, most economists argue that holding a college degree still offers clear lifetime benefits. Graduates earn higher pay and experience much less unemployment over their lifetimes.The overall U.S. unemployment rate is a still-low 4.2%, and the government’s monthly jobs reports show the economy is generating modest job gains. But the additional jobs are concentrated in health care, government, and restaurants and hotels. Job gains in professions with more college grads, such as information technology, legal services, and accounting have languished in the past 12 months.The unemployment rate has stayed low mostly because layoffs are still relatively rare. The actual hiring ratenew hires as a percentage of all jobshas fallen to 2014 levels, when the unemployment rate was much higher, at 6.2%. Economists call it a no-hire, no-fire economy.For college graduates 22 to 27 years old, the unemployment rate was 5.8% in Marchthe highest, excluding the pandemic, since 2012, and far above the nationwide rate.Lexie Lindo, 23, saw how reluctant companies were to hire while applying for more than 100 jobs last summer and fall after graduating from Clark Atlanta University with a business degree and 3.8 GPA. She had several summer internships in fields such as logistics and real estate while getting her degree, but no offer came.“Nobody was taking interviews or responding back to any applications that I filled out,” Lindo, who is from Auburn, Georgia, said. “My résumé is full, there’s no gaps or anything. Every summer I’m doing something. It’s just, ‘OK, so what else are you looking for?'”She has returned to Clark for a master’s program in supply chain studies and has an internship this summer at a Fortune 500 company in Austin, Texas. She’s hopeful it will lead to a job next year.Artificial intelligence could be a culprit, particularly in IT. Matthew Martin, senior U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, has calculated that employment for college graduates 28 and above in computer science and mathematical occupations has increased a slight 0.8% since 2022. For those ages 22 to 27, it has fallen 8%, according to Martin.Company announcements have further fueled concerns. Tobi Lutke, CEO of online commerce software company Shopify, said in an April memo that before requesting new hires, “teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI.”Last week, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said AI would likely reduce the company’s corporate work force over the next few years.“We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs,” Jassy said in a message to employees. “We expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”Zahid worries that AI is hurting her chances. She remembers seeing big billboard ads for AI at the San Francisco airport that asked, “Why hire a human when you could use AI?”Still, many economists argue that blaming AI is premature. Most companies are in the early stages of adopting the technology.Professional networking platform LinkedIn categorized occupations based on their exposure to AI and did not see big hiring differences between professions where AI was more prevalent and where it wasn’t, said Kory Kantenga, the firm’s head of economics for the Americas.“We don’t see any broad-based evidence that AI is having a disproportionate impact in the labor market or even a disproportionate impact on younger workers versus older workers,” Kantenga said.He added that the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes have also slowed hiring in tech. Many IT firms expanded when the Fed pinned its short-term rate at nearly zero after the pandemic. In 2022, the Fed began cranking up rates to combat inflation, which made it harder to borrow and grow.In fact, IT’s hiring spree when rates were lowfueled by millions of Americans ramping up their online shopping and video conferencingleft many firms with too many workers, economists say.Cory Stahle, an economist at the job-listings website Indeed, says postings for software development jobs, for example, have fallen 40% compared with four years ago. It’s a sharp shift for students who began studying computer science when hiring was near its peak.Zahid, who lives in Dublin, California, has experienced this whiplash firsthand. When she entered college in 2019, her father, who is a network engineer, encouraged her to study IT and said it would be easy for her to get a job in the field.She initially studied psychology but decided she wanted something more hands-on and gravitated to data analysis. Her husband, 33, has a software development job, and friends of hers in IT received immediate job offers upon graduation a few years ago. Such rapid hiring seems to have disappeared now, she said.She has her college diploma, but hasn’t hung it up yet.“ will put it up when I actually get a job, confirming that it was worth it all,” she said. AP Writer Matt Sedensky in New York contributed to this report. Christopher Rugaber, AP Economics Writer
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Robotaxis are crashing into the rideshare market. Drivers for apps like Uber and Lyft are growing worried about autonomous vehicles. Waymo has already deployed their vehicles across a handful of cities, taking riders from place to place without the need for a human driver. Waymo partnered with Uber in Austin, where Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the robotaxis were busier than over 99% of all drivers. The gig workers worry that their demand may be crushed, or that their wages and tips will be suppressed, thanks to the growing self-driving alternative. As Lyft dips into the AV race, the rideshare company is hoping to involve its drivers directly into the process. Lyfts new Driver Autonomous Forum will convene 6 to 10 drivers to discuss individual points of challenge in the AV expansion. Lyft envisions the program as a direct channel between drivers and senior leadership. The first will be held in Atlanta, where Lyft is soon debuting their partnership with May Mobility. We know AVs are going to transform the transportation network business, and we know this is something that drivers who come to Lyft care about deeply, Jeremy Bird, Lyfts executive vice president of driver experience, writes in an email to Fast Company. We wanted to create an intentional, structured way to gather their feedback on how we can innovate in a human-centered way. Inside the Lyft Driver Autonomous Forum As Lyft debuts its Atlanta AV options, the company is looking for feedback. The company has no plans to eliminate human drivers entirely; Bird continuously refers to a hybrid economy of human-driven and autonomous vehicles. But Lyft understands that robotaxis will necessarily distort the rideshare labor market. We’re using qualitative datathings like driver ratings and loyalty statusto identify drivers who are both highly qualified and invested in our shared success, Bird wrote. Some drivers will participate in multiple meetings to ensure continuity, while others will rotate in based on their specific expertise or regional knowledge. Rideshare drivers have already seen their business hurt by robotaxis. Phoenix and Los Angeles are especially overloaded with Waymos. Drivers from those cities told Business Insider that they saw decreased earnings after the deployment, and that they had to focus on more lucrative airport trips to earn their living. As these self-driving vehicles flood the market, part of the battle might be shifting gig-work drivers to other positions. Lyft understands this; the Driver Autonomous Forums will spend time discussing the growth of alternative work. Things like remote vehicle support, fleet management, or other roles we haven’t even thought of yet, Bird wrote. How can rideshare companies prepare their drivers for robotaxis? Most rideshare companies are unwilling to claim that their drivers will be directly replaced by robotaxis. In his email, Bird noted that AVs don’t just compete with drivers for a slice of the rideshare pie; they grow the pie. Ubers robotaxi chief Andrew McDonald previously said that there will be more Uber drivers in 10 years, not less. But drivers are worried. Michele Dottin is a longtime rideshare driver and the executive director for education at the Independent Drivers Guild. She doesnt want to temper or collaborate on the robotaxi expansionshe wants to stop it. How many hundreds of thousands of drivers are going to be out of work? Dottin asks. These vehicles wont be buying food. They wont be going to the grocery store or buying clothes. Not only does it affect our immediate economy, but it affects all the other industries that rely on people to go out and shop. Dottin makes the comparison to the shift from in-person retail to e-commerce. Customers were told that the solution was more convenient. How many teenagers used those jobs in the summer to make a little money? Now theres nowhere for them to go, Dottin says. The drivers Dottin has spoken to arent just worried about a loss of incometheyre also worried about a loss of independence, just like those retail workers now relegated to an Amazon warehouse. Lyft and Uber drivers operate in the gig economy, where their work is highly variable. According to a 2015 survey, 69% of Uber drivers had other part-time or full-time jobsa number experts expect has increased in the proceeding decade. In high-cost New York City, the average Uber driver makes about $32 per hour, though their income varies based on the time and distances they drive, as well as how many rides they take on. Because of the variable market, Andrew Garin cautions against thinking of robotaxi replacement as job loss. Garin studies the gig economy as an assistant professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University. His research demonstrates that ridesharing is not the primary job for most drivers. Drivers may not be losing their 9-to-5, but they could be losing an income stream. Its going to be hard to make the same living you did when there were great jobs waiting every second when you drop someone off, Garin says. So yes, its going to cut into that. Lyfts Driver Autonomous Forum isnt going to change these market conditions. It wont stop the shifting demands for a labor market already hit hard by COVID-19, and it wont make sure high-tipping riders are always available for human drivers. But it will, at a minimum, hear them out. We’re committed to managing this transition in a way that continues to support drivers who come to our platform and recognizes their enormous contributions, Bird wrote.
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