• Fast-food jobs — in the tough economy — are increasingly being filled by older workers instead of teenagers. Today, the average fast-food worker is 29 years old and more than 26 percent are parents raising children, according to the New York Times.
• Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc., owned by Blackstone group LP, is planning to raise an estimated $2.4 billion in its initial public offering (IPO). This would be a larger IPO than any other hotel company, according to Bloomberg.
• Rhode Island became the first state to eliminate sales taxes on original and limited-edition art sold in the state. The tax change is an effort to promote old industrial towns that have reinvented themselves as art districts, according to the Wall Street Journal.
• Millionaires are feeling more confident in the economy, but are much less confident in the stock market as prices continue to rise and create worries of a bubble, according to Spectrem Group’s Millionaire Investor Confidence Index and CNBC.
• Amazon.com is only four to five years away from potentially using small drones to deliver light packages in urban areas, according to the comapny’s Chief Executive Jeff Bezos. The company developed the drones as a way to cut delivery time, according to the Wall Street Journal.
• The number of gun patents hit a 35-year record as gun companies such as Smith & Wesson Holding Corp. and Sturm Ruger & Co. create new products to continue the growth of already booming gun sales. Sales continue to rise despite increased regulations on gun purchases, according to Bloomberg.
• The Federal Trade Commission is planning to regulate how media outlets use “sponsored content,” which are advertisements that look and read like editorial content. The concern is that these advertisements are not being properly identified, according to the Wall Street Journal.
• U.S. manufacturing experienced its greatest growth in two-and-a-half years this past month, based on The Institute for Supply Management’s index of national factory activity. The increase was much greater than analysts had expected, according to Reuters.
