That’s how many workers are currently employed by e-commerce company Alibiba to weed out counterfeit products on the site. An additional 200 workers will be hired next year. Another 5,400 volunteers also look for counterfeits. Between the start of 2013 and November of this year, Alibaba says it spent $160 million fighting fake goods on the site, as reported by the BBC.
That’s how much Brandon Johnson charges for a 7-foot-tall Christmas tree. Your payment also buys you tree delivery … by elves. Winter weather slows down Johnson’s lumberjack business, so he finds another way to make money around the holidays. “Essentially, I take all my guys from my tree business for the rest of the year and we just transition from lumberjacks to elves,” he says.
As many as 800,000 seasonal workers will have been added by businesses in the U.S. from October through December of this year – more than any year since 2000. But some estimate that only one in 10 seasonal workers will be hired full-time after the holiday season.
Rich Russians can get a good deal in the U.K. If they have more than $3 million to invest, they can get a visa in as little as 24 hours; if they have more than $15 million they can apply for citizenship after only two years. And with the ruble plummeting in value, some are seeking to invest their money elsewhere, like in high-end real estate in London.
If you’re eating out for Christmas, chances are good that you’re ordering Chinese food. Over at Slate, they found that the percentage of orders on GrubHub for Chinese food rose 152 percent on Christmas Day 2013.
There’s a lot happening in the world. Through it all, Marketplace is here for you.
You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible.
Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.
