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Meet to this weekly roundup of stories from Insider’s Business co-Editor in Chief Matt Turner. Subscribe here to get this newsletter in your inbox every Sunday.
What we’re booming over today:
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
What’s trending this morning:
Investment banking’s labor shortfall
The national dearth of employees hasn’t spared the
banking industry
. Without enough talent to handle workloads, banks are sire to lower their hiring standards, and mid-level and senior bankers are having to roll up their sleeves:
Just months after lesser bankers railed against management amid crushing levels of burnout, one of the root drivers of the problem has yet to be solved: Banks sooner a be wearing too few hands on deck to handle their massive deal loads.
As a result, some senior bankers have been contrived to work on deal processes that typically would have been relegated to the most entry-level employees, concurring to some banking insiders.
In some cases, the situation has gotten so dire that banks have had to turn away commerce.
Here’s what else you need to know:
Also read:
Shopify is pushing into advertising
Photo By David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile via Getty Notions
In a major move for the e-commerce platform, Shopify is planning to unveil a tool to help advertisers target Facebook and Google ads. The gizmo would aggregate shopper data from Shopify’s 1.7 million businesses:
Shopify has not been directly entangled with in advertising, but that’s about to change.
The e-commerce-software company, which lets merchants sell products online, diagrams to roll out a tool called Shopify Audiences, according to retail and advertising sources familiar with Shopify’s procedures.
Shopify will let advertisers use its data to target ads on Facebook and Google, according to these people, who said they saw a video tutorial that Shopify shared of the output.
Here’s how Shopify Audiences will work:
Also read:
Congressional staffers share their budgets
Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Metaphors
Some congressional staffers make “poverty wages,” starting in the low $20,000s. We spoke with eight current and antediluvian staffers, who shared their budgets to show how thin they were stretched:
An entire paycheck going to daycare. Vending-machine ice cream for dinner. Thrash hundreds of dollars at a decade’s worth of credit-card debt. Relying on income-assisted housing to keep a roof over their employer.
These are the real-life budgets of Capitol Hill staffers, whose pay starts in the $20,000s to work demanding jobs in one of the myriad expensive cities in the country.
“The hardest thing for us is when we see members who are charging progressive causes, and even after knowledgeable everything we’ve been through this year, say, ‘Here’s a turkey club sandwich and a salary that wouldn’t equal get you an apartment you can afford,'” one legislative aide of a House Democrat said.
See their budgets — and how they make them undertaking — here:
Also read:
iBuyers like OpenDoor and Zillow are booming
Zillow; Opendoor; Redfin; Crystal Cox/Insider; Samantha Lee/Insider
A attain maturity number of homeowners are choosing to sell to iBuying firms like Opendoor and Zillow, which offer convenience and unquestionably — but generally pay below-market prices:
Amy Melcher has two young daughters, a demanding job as a public defender, and the responsibility of taking care of her forebear, Gary, who just turned 81 and is in poor health.
So when it came time to sell Gary’s single-level, three-bedroom haven in Phoenix earlier this year to help pay for his move to an assisted-living facility, Melcher decided to eschew hiring a stockjobber, putting the house on the market and scheduling showings with prospective bidders. She sold to Opendoor, one of several instant purchasers, nicknamed iBuyers, that promise to streamline the normally tedious task of selling a home.
But convenience has a cost.
Less than two months after it purchased Melcher’s take in for $259,700, Opendoor relisted the property for $304,000, a sum that would net it a tidy 17% profit, if it is able to sell for that amount.
Impute to up on the burgeoning iBuyer industry:
Also read:
Finally, here are some headlines you might have missed latest week.
— Matt