In addition to being a celebration of the American labor movement — and a great excuse to eat a hot dog — Labor Day represents something else: the unofficial end of summer.

The passing of the holiday signifies the kick-off of companies’ final sprint to the end of the year.

So you can hit the ground running on Tuesday, we wrapped up some of our best stories from the past few months across markets, tech, and business.

And tomorrow we’ll be back in your inboxes with a whole new look — stay tuned.

Enjoy!

What’s on deck:

• Markets: America isn’t ready for a war with China.
• Tech: Big Tech salaries revealed.
• Business: How to avoid Airbnb scams.

Top things in markets

1. The economy’s doomsday clock has been reset, and Wall Street’s fearmongers were totally wrong. Forecasters who have been predicting that a recession is around the corner need to admit defeat.
2. The US and China are gearing up for war — and America isn’t ready. Military and economic experts agree that the US is nowhere near ready for a war with China.
3. Goldman Sachs used to be stone-cold killers. Now, they just bore people to death. The bank has gone from a disciplined force of finance’s greatest killers to a humbled and weakened shell of itself, Insider’s Linette Lopez writes.
4. American Express is being investigated over sales practices, and salespeople say they’ve been made scapegoats. A sales team of the card giant was shaken by layoffs and turmoil amid federal investigations into small-business sales.
5. BlackRock’s Larry Fink championed ESG investing, but it’s complicating succession plans. The criticism he’s faced over ESG investing hangs over his legacy.

1. Leaked messages show Amazon will force a “voluntary resignation” on employees failing to relocate near their team “hubs.” It’s just one of many companies pulling workers back to the office. For more on Amazon’s RTO plans, click here.
2. A feud is heating up between Arizona workers and the world’s leading chipmaker after the company said the US didn’t have the skills to build its new factory.
3. Leaked Google pay data shows how much thousands of employees report making in units like Cloud, engineering, and sales. Check out our entire Big Tech salary database here.
4. The strange, improbable rise of Mark Zuckerberg 3.0. His new persona is a survival response to the most turbulent period in Meta’s 20-year history.
5. The reality of Big Tech’s “fake work” problem. Inside the perverse system of “lazy management” that’s wrecking the tech industry.

1. The most common “bait and switch” Airbnb scams. Airbnb guests say hosts have ruined their stays by switching properties or addresses at the last minute. Here’s how to avoid them.
2. “I lost my job to ChatGPT and was made obsolete.” The author was out of work for three months before taking a job passing out samples at grocery stores.
3. No more Fridays. A real-world experiment proved that we should all shift to a four-day workweek.
4. Meet the housing influencers “hacking” their way to real-estate riches. Social media sparked a rise in the popularity of “house hacking,” a fancy term for the age-old concept of being a landlord.
5. “I almost got banned from American Airlines for ‘skiplagging.’” The writer was terrified when her boarding pass was flagged. Now she says she’ll never do it again.