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The child care crisis has many costs for parents, including missing hours of work, according to a new index from professional services firm KPMG.

An estimated 1.2 to 1.5 million workers, largely women, either shorten working hours or miss work entirely each month because of child care access, equating to as much as 1.4 billion lost work hours each year. Losing even just one hour of work each week can cost a household $780 to $1,504 in income annually.

Lost productivity also impacts businesses, and the number of employees leaving the workforce due to child care costs reached a post-pandemic high last month.

People hold sings during a strike rally for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) at the Seattle Union Hall in Seattle, Washington, on October 15, 2024.

Boeing reached a tentative agreement with its striking union workers Saturday, potentially ending a five-week-long strike with the union’s vote of approval scheduled for Wednesday. The deal includes a 35% wage increase over four years, increases to 401k contributions and a $7,000 ratification bonus. Boeing has lost an estimated $1 billion a month over the strike according to a Standard & Poor’s estimate cited by CNN, and the aerospace firm also announced layoffs last week.

The Department of Transportation is investigating Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system, another regulatory hurdle as the company positions its future as autonomous driving. Regulators are looking into the system’s ability “to detect and respond appropriately” to low visibility conditions and “any updates or modifications” from Tesla to improve performance during such instances.

San Francisco startup TomoCredit’s CEO says the company switched from a credit card to a subscription service that boosts your credit score to serve a “broader client group” in 2023. But before it dropped its credit card business, TomoCredit defaulted on a $30 million line of credit and was subsequently hit with a lawsuit. It’s another odd chapter in the saga of TomoCredit, which has been the target of a surge in consumer complaints from people who’ve had trouble canceling their Tomo subscriptions.

The Federal Reserve has successfully achieved a soft landing and the current market rally should continue into 2025, according to Michael Arone, chief investment strategist at State Street Global Advisors. In an interview at last week’s eighth annual Forbes/SHOOK Top Advisor........

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