Money, in brief

From 17 August 2026, food delivery riders in Australia who work through Uber Eats and DoorDash have a legal earnings floor for the first time. [1]

The order comes from the Fair Work Commission, Australia's workplace tribunal. A 2024 law gave it the power to set standards for gig work. [1]

The floor is A$31.30 an hour on a bicycle or e-bike, A$31.80 on a motorbike and A$32 in a car. [1]

Those rates count only engaged time: the minutes from accepting a delivery to finishing it. [1]

Time spent waiting for the next job is not paid. Time spent waiting at a restaurant for an order already accepted is. [1]

Every 21 days the app adds up a rider's pay. If the average for engaged time falls under the floor, the app must top it up. [1]

Riders still pay for their own compulsory vehicle insurance. The apps must now offer them personal accident cover. [1]

The Transport Workers' Union counts at least 23 gig workers killed at work in Australia since 2017. [1]

In 2023 Uber warned that rules like this could raise the cost of a meal delivery by up to 85%. DoorDash said prices could more than triple. [1]

The final order was agreed by the union and both companies after almost two years of talks, and riders in rideshare and parcel delivery have cases of their own under way. [1]

Uber measures US driver pay the same way, per hour between accepting and finishing a trip, and puts the median above $30 including tips. [2]

Gridwise, a company whose app tracks what gig drivers earn, found US customers paid almost 10% more for gig services in 2025. Workers' hourly pay rose less than half that. [2]

In Massachusetts, a 2024 settlement guaranteed Uber and Lyft drivers $34.48 an hour, and drivers there formed the first US ride-share union in May 2026. [3]

Why it matters. Watch the rideshare and parcel delivery cases already before the commission, and whether Australian delivery fees rise and orders fall, as they did after Seattle's floor. [1][4]

In January 2024 Seattle required delivery apps to pay drivers at least $5 a job, worked out from minutes and miles. [4] Labour economists using Gridwise data found base pay per delivery rose from about $5 to over $12. [4] DoorDash added a fee of about $5 to Seattle orders, tips fell, and Uber Eats removed tipping at checkout. [4] Drivers already on the apps did 20% to 30% fewer deliveries, and the wait between jobs nearly doubled. [4] After the first month, monthly earnings were back where they started. [4]

Why it matters. It is the nearest real test of the kind of floor Australia has just started. Chicago, Colorado and Minnesota have proposed similar rules. [4]

The Trades Union Congress, Britain's federation of trade unions, asked the UK government in May 2026 to ban dynamic pay on apps such as Uber. [5] Under dynamic pay, a computer sets each fare and each driver's share to match demand at that moment. [5] Uber took a fixed 20% of UK fares, later 25%, before switching to this system in 2023. [5] An Oxford study found many Uber drivers earned substantially less an hour afterwards. [5] Drivers told the union the work felt like gambling. [5]

Why it matters. The union's leader said two drivers doing practically the same job at the same time could be paid wildly different sums. [5] A driver has seconds to accept a job, with patchy information about what it pays. [5]

The Wall Street Journal followed Xu Hui, a 35-year-old delivery rider in Beijing, through one working day. [6] He made his first drop before 11am and stopped at 11.31pm, after 60 miles and nearly 50 deliveries. [6] That is about one delivery every 15 minutes. [6] He earned about $46. [6] China now has some 200 million gig workers, in a country once known for its factory workers. [6]

Why it matters. It shows how large app work can grow when anyone can join. Many riders there say the flexibility is what draws them. [6]

Drivers for DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub in the US are independent contractors, so they buy their own fuel. [7] After the US and Israeli war on Iran began, petrol went from under $3 a gallon nationally to around $4 in Detroit by late March 2026. [7] DoorDash offered 10% cash back on fuel through late April. [7] Lee Dahl, a 65-year-old Detroit driver, now accepts fewer than a quarter of the orders he is offered, to keep his miles down. [7]

Why it matters. The cost of each job rose while its pay did not. Dahl said DoorDash's rebate was like getting paid for one or two more orders a week. [7]

Klarna, a buy now, pay later lender, replaced hundreds of customer service staff with an AI chatbot in 2024. [8] After customers complained, it began hiring people again, but on gig terms rather than as full-time staff. [8] Its chief executive, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, called it an Uber type of set-up. [8] The chatbot now answers basic questions, and gig workers take the harder ones. [8]

Why it matters. Office work can move onto the same terms as app driving, with no paid time off, health insurance or minimum wage. [8] Sociologists quoted by the Guardian expect it in many industries. [8]

From 2025, a US app only has to send a gig worker a Form 1099-K, which reports what customers paid, if payments top $20,000 across more than 200 transactions. [9] Before 2025 the trigger was $600. [9] Some states, including Maryland and Virginia, still require a form from $600. [9] The US tax agency also set its 2026 business mileage rate at 72.5 cents a mile, up 2.5 cents. [10] That rate is the standard figure for the deductible cost of driving a car for work. [10]

Why it matters. The form shows everything customers paid, tips included, before the app takes its fee. [9] So the figure on it is larger than what the driver actually received.

Australia's Fair Work Commission raised award wages by 4.75% from 1 July 2026, for about 2.7 million workers. [11] About 100,000 of the lowest paid got 5.97%, taking the national minimum wage from A$24.95 to A$26.44 an hour. [11][12] Unions had asked for 6% after the Middle East conflict pushed prices up. [11] Prices had risen 4.2% in the year to April. [11] The commission's president, Adam Hatcher, said closing the gap in lost buying power would take well over 5%. [11]

Why it matters. More than 60% of the lowest paid workers are women, and more than 70% work part-time. [12]

Since 1 July 2026, Australian employers must pay superannuation, the country's workplace pension, at the same time as wages instead of every three months. [13] The money has to reach the worker's fund within seven business days of payday. [13] The change was brought in against more than A$3bn of super that goes unpaid each year. [13] The same day, government-funded parental leave rose from 24 to 26 weeks, and the lowest income tax rate fell from 16% to 15%. [13]

Why it matters. Paying the pension with each wage makes a missing payment easier for a worker to spot. [13]

About 800 public sector workers in Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands, accepted a pay offer in a ballot run by Unite, their union. [14] Of those who voted, 66% said yes. [14] The rises run from 5% for the lowest-paid grade to 3.7% for the highest. [14] The union said the offer came after eight months of delays by the States of Guernsey, the island's government. [14] Staff include hospital porters and airport workers. [14]

Why it matters. A worker in the middle of the lowest grade will earn about 550 pounds a week. [14] The union says that is still not enough to live on in Guernsey. [14]

More than half of US community associations, the boards that run condo buildings and housing estates, plan to raise regular fees, a May 2026 survey found. [15] 14% plan special assessments, which are one-off charges for big repairs. [15] Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two big US home-loan companies, say that from 2027 loans will stop in buildings whose reserves are under 15% of the yearly budget, up from 10%. [15] The median monthly condo fee reached $420 in 2025, up 29% from 2019. [16]

Why it matters. One five-unit building in Ocean City, Maryland, kept no reserves for 35 years, then billed each owner $70,000 over two years. [15] Condo prices have fallen 6% since March 2022, while house prices rose 7.5%. [15]

Insuring a single condo in Florida costs $1,035 a year on average, more than twice the US average of $510, NerdWallet found. [17] In Miami the average is $2,335. [17] After a condo tower collapsed in Surfside, Florida, in 2021, the state required regular inspections and money set aside for repairs. [17] Many buildings raised that money through special assessments on owners. [17] By May 2026, Florida condo sales and median prices were up on the year. [15]

Why it matters. Owners can also be billed their share when damage runs past the limit of the building's own policy. [18] Individual condo policies sell an add-on, called loss assessment cover, for that bill. [18]

IRS Criminal Investigation, the US tax agency's police arm, opened 97 elder fraud investigations in its 2025 financial year. [19] Halfway through the next year it had opened 64 more. [19] Its cases since 2021 involve alleged fraud of $885.86m. [19] Of that, $736.82m is in cases opened in the last two years. [19] Nearly 97% of its prosecuted cases ended in conviction, with average prison terms of almost four years. [19]

Why it matters. Most of the money in the agency's elder fraud files comes from cases opened in the last two years. [19] These are only the cases this one agency took on.

A court in Gainesville, Florida, sentenced Atharva Sathawane to 18 years in prison for his part in a fraud run partly from India. [20] Elderly victims were talked into cashing in their retirement savings for cash or gold. [20] He made at least 33 trips to collect it, taking $6.6m in cash and gold. [20] An FBI agent said Florida victims lost more than $33m to gold bar scams last year. [20]

Why it matters. He was caught because one victim grew suspicious and called the police. [20] A concerned friend of another victim stopped a further pickup. [20]

Peter Hunter, who ran a care company in Wakefield, England, was jailed for six years and nine months at Leeds Crown Court. [21] He took power of attorney, the legal right to run another person's money, over several clients and paid their money to himself. [21] He inflated care bills and made himself executor of one woman's will. [21] He also took 32,691 pounds of his own mother's benefits. [21] The frauds totalled 330,370 pounds between 2011 and 2021. [21]

Why it matters. Power of attorney exists so someone can manage money for a person who no longer can. [21] Here the person given that power was the person taking the money. [21]

US prosecutors in Detroit charged four people, including a sitting judge, with stealing from wards, adults a court has found unable to run their own affairs. [22] A company called Guardian and Associates had been appointed to look after wards in more than 1,000 cases. [22] The judge, Andrea Bradley-Baskin, is accused of using $70,000 of one ward's money to buy a stake in a bar. [22] About 1.3 million American adults are under a guardianship or conservatorship. [23]

Why it matters. The accused include the owner of the company appointed to protect the wards and a lawyer who represented it in the same court. [22] The charges are accusations, not yet proved in court.

In 2025 the FBI's internet crime unit began counting complaints with an AI link: more than 22,000, with about $893m lost. [24] People over 60 lost $352m of it. [24] Cloning a voice now takes a few seconds of audio, and in one study listeners spotted a fake voice only about 60% of the time. [24] In a Bankrate survey, 52% of Americans expected to be targeted by a scam, up from 37% the year before. [25]

Why it matters. These scams are built around fear and hurry, such as a grandchild's voice asking for money at once. [24] Stress pushes people to decide fast at the moment they need to slow down. [24]

The US tax agency is moving away from paper refund cheques. [26] If a refund cannot be paid into a bank account, the agency sends one letter, called a CP53E, asking for correct details. [26] It sends that letter only once. [26] If a second deposit fails, there is no further chance to update the details. [26] The agency never asks for bank details by email, text or phone. [26]

Why it matters. Scammers are using the confusion over the change to ask people for their bank details. [26] The only official way to update them is through the taxpayer's own online account. [26]

Canada's government introduced a bill in April 2026 to create a Financial Crimes Agency to investigate and prosecute financial crime. [27] A public inquiry had found the country had no joined-up plan against money laundering. [27] Canada will also ban cryptocurrency ATMs, machines that swap cash for crypto, which officials say scammers use to take victims' money. [27] The country has nearly 4,000 of them, the most per person in the world. [27]

Why it matters. Canada's financial intelligence unit found $45bn in suspect transactions last year but hands cases to police rather than arresting anyone. [27] The new agency would investigate and prosecute itself. [27]

Britain's Financial Conduct Authority, with the tax office and a regional police unit, visited eight sites suspected of illegal peer-to-peer crypto trading, where people buy and sell crypto directly. [28] Anyone trading this way for a living must register with the regulator. [28] No firm doing it in the UK is registered. [28] Separately, the regulator published final rules on 30 June 2026 for a full crypto regime. [29] That regime is expected to start on 25 October 2027. [29]

Why it matters. Until then, the regulator's warning is that unregistered peer-to-peer traders in the UK are operating illegally. [28] It also calls crypto a high-risk investment. [28]

Cambodia arrested Chen Zhi, head of the Prince Group, and sent him to China with two other Chinese nationals. [30] The US had charged him the October before with running scams from Cambodia that stole billions in cryptocurrency. [30] US prosecutors seized about 127,271 bitcoin, worth $14bn at the time, the largest bitcoin seizure ever. [31] Victims were contacted online and talked into sending crypto for investments that did not exist. [31]

Why it matters. Cambodia also put Prince Bank, part of the group, into liquidation. [30] Its customers can still withdraw money and repay loans. [30]

On 11 August 2026 the US Treasury and tax agency proposed rules for employers who pay into Trump Accounts, a new savings account for children. [32] An employer can add up to $2,500 a year tax-free, within a $5,000 yearly limit for each child. [32][33] The US government adds a one-off $1,000 for US citizens born from 2025 to 2028. [33] The money must track US shares and generally stays locked until the year the child turns 18. [33] Comments close on 25 September, and a public hearing is on 15 October. [32]

Why it matters. The draft says employers may not offer the benefit in a way that favours highly paid staff or their children. [32]

The US Supreme Court ruled in June 2026 that President Trump could dismiss Rebecca Kelly Slaughter from the Federal Trade Commission, which polices unfair business practices. [34] The ruling lets the US president fire the leaders of dozens of agencies at will, including the Securities and Exchange Commission. [34] In a second case, the justices ruled 5-4 that Lisa Cook, a governor of the US central bank, could not be fired without a chance to answer the allegations. [34]

Why it matters. The court kept the US central bank's protection from firing at will. [34] The agencies that bring cases on behalf of shoppers and investors lost it. [34]

Pay-advance apps, also called earned wage access, let hourly workers take part of their pay before payday. [35] A Center for Responsible Lending study found workers often use them for groceries and rent. [35] Heavy users paid $421 a year on average in fees and overdraft charges, almost triple what moderate users paid. [35] Employer versions are often free for a worker who waits a day or two, and charge a few dollars for money at once. [36]

Why it matters. The amount taken early comes off the next paycheck. [36] So the next pay packet starts short. [36] The study found heavy users taking more advances, quickly, and from several apps at once. [35]