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.

Let’s get into the headlines,

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.

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 Summit, Anore noted that “inflation is headed in the right direction” and predicted that corporate profit levels will reach levels never before seen in the U.S. next year. 

Nvidia reached an all-time high share price last week, but it has much more room to grow, according to Bank of America analysts, who upped their price target for the AI darling, saying a “generational opportunity” is still ahead for the company in AI accelerators. Bank of America projects the total addressable market for the technology will grow from $45 billion in 2023 to $117 billion this year to $363 billion by year’s end—and Nvidia maintains a 75% market share.

Every day up until the election, Elon Musk announced Saturday he will randomly give $1 million to a swing state voter who signs a petition supporting the First and Second Amendments, in an initiative that at least one election lawyer has said is “clearly illegal.” Musk endorsed former President Donald Trump in July after the first assassination attempt on his life, he gave about $75 million to his own pro-Trump super PAC in the third quarter and has also been campaigning both in person and on his social media platform X.

Nearly 26 years after releasing its first best-selling video game Half-Life, Valve has become one of the most consequential companies in the nearly $250 billion video game industry. Its increasingly reclusive cofounder and president Gabe Newell is worth an estimated $9.5 billion, and legal filings reviewed by Forbes show the company has sustained a more than 40% operating profit margin for a decade.