Category: TRENDS ON THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC FRONT – Jan 24 2023

In December, inflation in Japan ran at 4 percent, its highest since December 1981, surpassing the Bank of Japan’s 2-percent target for the ninth month running.

The prices that German businesses pay for materials and services inflated at an annual rate of 21.6 percent in December, sharply lower than November’s 28.2-percent gallop, the Financial Times reported.

Food and drinks in Great Britain cost 16.8 percent more in December than a year earlier, the Office for National Statistics reported, setting a 45-year record.

LKAB, Sweden’s government-owned mining company, has found a deposit of more than a million tons of rare earth minerals near its Kiruna iron ore mine in Lapland.

In 2022, for the first time since 1961, the last year of what is known as the Great Famine, China’s population decreased, according to the National Statistics Bureau, signaling demographic and economic headwinds as the country seeks to become the world’s dominant economy.

As of last week, 114 countries representing 95 percent of the world’s economic output were exploring, testing, or issuing digital versions of national currencies, according to the Atlantic Council.

Two-thirds of private- and public-sector economists at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, this month expect a recession this year, a survey conducted earlier this month by PwC Global found.

This is our 25th week reporting the long trend-line of layoffs that signal a further economic downturn in a country near you. Inflation and interest rate hikes are causing companies in many sectors to lay off employees. An average of 1,600 tech workers have been laid off every single day of 2023 so far. The Great Resignation is not yet over.