Apple's gross margin is 46% (lots of hardware), Google's is 58%, and Meta's is 83%. Meanwhile, Ford's gross margin is 8.4% and Walmart's is 25%.
I’ve never heard of any kind of worker or contractor in Capital Expenses/Balance Sheet. That’s wild.
Generally Accepted Accounting Principles don’t let you put t labor wherever you choose to ‘categorize’ them.
But you can pay consultants and buy services from “third-parties”, which moves the expense, as I described, from payroll to indirect expenses. This falls into that funny gray area for contractors—looks like a duck…
This follows into other industries with high IP-based costs rather than traditional asset-based costs. We see high margins from investment firms, consultants, banks, and SaaS companies. Basically, companies who rely on their employees knowledge to deliver products. We tend to see lower margins from auto manufacturers, construction, textile, and chemicals. The type of companies that require large asset investments and maintenance on machines and factories.
This is why Apple has pushed so hard into their "Services" offerings. The margins are incredibly high (and more predictable) compared to building and selling physical phones and computers. I can build the service once and sell it to 100 million people. For phones, I have to build each one before selling it.
https://fortune.com/longform/failed-unicorn-startups-billion...
Whatever the reason, the outcome is the same: companies held aloft on a cushion of easy money, untethered to market forces, free to pay arbitrary salaries to people easily outcompeting their neighbors who aren't so blessed.