US jobless figure climbs above 10 per cent
It perhaps has a political significance greater than its marginal economic impact - but when one worker in ten is out of work, an economy truly is on the verge of mass unemployment. The US economy is showing signs of a rebound in demand and production but the labour market data continues to show the depth of the preceding slump. Over eight million Americans have now lost their job since the start of the recession in December 2007, with more than 15m Americans now out of work. Here are some links to coverage of this news.
Guardian: US jobless rate hits 10%
Independent: Sharp rise in US unemployment figures
Caffeinated stimulus to demand
Coffee shops seem - by and large - to be surviving the recession and, in many cases thriving. The number of independent coffee stores has grown by more than 7% in the last year. Across the country hundreds of new stores have opened. This doesn’t make coffee an inferior good - whose demand rises as real income falls. Instead there are stronger forces at work, for example the rise of the nomadic entrepreneur who prefers to work away from expensive offices. Hugh Pym provides an overview of the strength of retail coffee demand in this piece from BBC news. London has the highest concentration of coffee stores in the UK followed by Edinburgh.
Not every brand is enjoying the same performance. Costa Coffe which has 974 stores in the UK has reported like-for-like sales growth yesterday of 2.5 per cent in the six months to the end of August.
Caffè Nero, which has almost 400 UK outlets, is believed to be trading at a similar level to Costa, although Starbucks has like-for-like sales down by an estimated 4.5 per cent to 5 per cent in recent months. Brand fatigue in action.
UK Recession and Business Capacity - Teacher Presentation
This streamed presentation provides a snapshot of the latest economic data on UK business capacity. The slump in output in the British economy has left many businesses and industries with a huge amount of spare capacity and the negative output gap is expected to grow beyond 6% of GDP in 2010 according to the OECD. A high level of spare capacity (or productive slack) has important consequences for jobs, inflationary pressures, planned investment and business profits.
Launch interactive presentation on Recession & Capacity
The US Economy Rebounds - Teacher Presentation
Here is a topical teacher presentation that provides a snapshot of, and commentary on key economic data from the US as the world’s largest economy starts to pick up from the depths of the recession. Many questions remain not least the durability of a recovery and the extent to which the US experiences a jobless recovery.
Launch streamed, interactive version - US Economy Rebounds
Download PowerPoint (ppt) version:
Mark Mardell reports on the latest US economic data in this BBC news video. Hamish McRae also reports on the state of health of the US economy in this piece from the Independent.
Youth Unemployment and the Recession
This is a video of the presentation by Danny Blanchflower at the RSA this week.
read more...»Rated: 
(5/5), based on 2 reviews
Warning - Businesses at Risk from Economic Recovery
An excellent recent article in the ACCA magazine examines an interesting phenomenon - more businesses collapse at the beginning of a recovery than during the depths of a recession. Its all to do with working capital…
Rated: 
(2/5), based on 1 review
New Edition of Etonomics
The latest edition of our school economics magazine Etonomics has just been published. There are articles on digital economics, the national lottery and behavioural economics, game theory and climate change, the future for world aviation, microfinance and the inevitability (or otherwise) of economic recessions.
A download can be requested here:
China’s growth starts to climb back above the 8% target
China’s leaders have set ambitious targets for economic growth - with an aim of reaching 8% growth of real GDP in 2009, a year in which world trade has shrunk and much of the developed world has been mired in recession. An enormous stimulus programme seems to be having an effect with the latest data showing a pick up in output and annualised growth of GDP climbing above 8.5%. Exports remain weak and many Chinese manufacturers are finding that the prices they are able to get from advanced economy importers continues to fall - the terms of trade have moved against them. Lifting domestic demand has become a key macroeconomic objective for the Chinese government. China has poured £354billion into spending on infrastructure in order to boost its domestic economy as exports have suffered.
This BBC news video reports on the latest Chinese growth figures.
See also
BBC: China economic growth accelerates
The Times: The dragon roars again after new figures put China’s output on a growth hat-trick
Size of UK GDP overtaken by Italy
Edmund Conway reports in the Telegraph that the impact of the recession and the depreciation of sterling against the Euro has caused Italy to overtake the UK in terms of size of economy.
The BBC web site has a useful short article on GDP and its measurement
Rated: (5/5), based on 1 review
Classroom Activity - Economic Cycle in Pictures
Here is a great starter activity that gets students thinking about what can happen at each stage of the economic cycle. The idea was created by Ruth Tarrant who will be presenting at our November conference at the Moller Centre Cambridge University and I have developed it a little further with some additional images. There are twenty six - an A to Z of images associated with different stages of the business cycle.
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