Menu

National employment at year-end stood at 774.80 million persons, went up 4.90 million persons year-on-year. Of the total, the employment in primary industry reached 306.54 million persons, occupied 39.6 percent of national employment; that of secondary industry amounted for 211.09 million persons, accounted for 27.2 percent; that of tertiary industry totaled 257.17 million persons, took up 33.2 percent.

The Conference Board Leading Economic Index™ (LEI) for the U.S. increased 1.0 percent, The Conference Board Coincident Economic Index™ (CEI) decreased 0.2 percent and The Conference Board Lagging Economic Index™ (LAG) decreased 0.5 percent in April.

Mortgage rates were all over the map this week, with the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate inching higher to 5.24 percent. According to Bankrate.com's weekly national survey, the average 30-year fixed mortgage has an average of 0.43 discount and origination points.

Fitch Ratings said that Korea's banks will continue to face challenges to their profitability due to higher than usual credit costs sustained through a slowdown in the domestic economy amid the global downturn, albeit tempered by the Korean government's wide-ranging fiscal stimulus efforts. Nevertheless, the capitalisation of the banks remains satisfactory, which should continue, as aided by government support if necessary. Both foreign and local currency liquidity for the banks have also eased amidst central bank support and are in line with general liquidity trends globally - although liquidity to the real economy is likely to remain tight for some time to come, which could compound credit costs to an extent.

The World Bank revealed that while the policy responses have been encouraging, the global economic and financial crisis is having a deepening impact on households in EU10 countries, and urged Governments to restructure their public finances to help mitigate the social costs of the crisis.

Fitch Ratings said at its annual Global Banking Conference in London that European governments are likely to renew bank funding and liquidity facilities where necessary until the global financial system returns to a normal operating environment. Fitch does not expect acute refinancing risk because governments will not want to repeat the current financial crisis.

Despite fears of the potential impact of the swine flu virus, statistics from OAG, the world's leading aviation data business, reveal the year-on-year decline in global airline capacity has not accelerated for May 2009 compared to figures for April when the outbreak began.

France should do more to ease the transition of unskilled young people into employment. The government should give priority to helping young people the furthest removed from the job market and to strengthening the social protection of the most disadvantaged, according to a new report by the OECD.

Labor productivity, defined as output per hour, rose in 66 percent of the detailed service-providing and mining industries in 2007, about the same as in 2006. Unit labor costs, which reflect hourly compensation and productivity, rose in 70 percent of the industries, compared to 76 percent in 2006.

Three-quarters of U.S. consumers prefer buying insurance products through agents and other trusted sources, but younger and higher-income consumers are more inclined to purchase products via the Web than through an agent and are more inclined to switch insurers, according to findings of a survey of more than 1,000 U.S. consumers by Accenture.