America's Youth Unemployment Rate Is One Of The Worst Of Wealthy, Large Economies

America's Youth Unemployment Rate Is One Of The Worst Of Wealthy, Large Economies

With graduation looming around the corner for many college students, this article seems important. Our economy seems to be back on track after the 2008 recession and everything seems to be improving, except in the area of youth unemployment. After the recession, college graduates had to compete with recently laid off workers who had more job experience than them, making it much more difficult to find jobs. The job market for college graduates has gotten better, but it is still lower than many other nations of equivalent wealth. The article doesn't go into detail which countries, but I would assume they would be European nations. Even when they do become employed, it is many times in jobs where they are underemployed, which does not bode well for them because as it says in the article, 1 in 5 households is stuck with college debt. There are other factors that might not be taken into account though in this scenario, like graduates getting degrees in fields where there might not be many jobs. Those job markets could already be saturated. Even if this is partly the case, the economy does need to create around 4 million jobs to get the unemployment down for the youth back down to normal.

Euro Can Grow to 25 States in Next Few Years in Finnish Scenario

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-05/euro-can-grow-to-25-states-in-next-few-years-in-finnish-scenario.html

According to Finland's Europe Minister Alexander Stubb, EU and the euro have a bright future. He envisions the euro growing to 24-25 members in next few years. In respect to the crisis in Europe, Stubb believes that European authorities did all they could and now it is time for governments to follow on their budget promises, a task that is much easier said than done.
Finland has done something no other nations in EU were able to during the crisis. They kept a stable AAA credit according to three main ratings companies and the country was able to keep its budget within European Union's 3 percent deficit limit. While Finland stands as an example for the rest of the region, there are handful of countries that rely on international bailouts to pay their bills. Therefore, the challenge still stands and it will have to take more than one stable economy to restore confidence in the region.

Slowed economic growth in the US

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2013/04/201342614326535652.html

                The article discusses that usually economic growth was gaining speed at an annual rate of 2.5% for the first quarter of every year. The department of commerce released a statement saying that GDP had grown 2.5% in the first quarter after growth almost stalled at 0.4% in the fourth quarter of the preceding year. However even with the surge in GDP between quarters it still did not meet economists expectations which were set at 3%. Much of this growth is attributed to the increase in consumer spending, which accounts for more than two thirds of US economic activity. Consumer spending increased at a 3.2% pace, the fastest growth since the later part of 2010. This was a welcome increase seeing as how the previous quarter saw only a 1.8% in growth. Also attributing to the economic growth was a surge in people purchasing vehicles as well as more money from utilities due to a longer and colder winter than average.

          

      Even though economic growth did not meet the expectations I believe that this is little more than a slight bump in the road. Yes, we did not meet the expectations of 3%, but it was still a significant increase from the 0.4% we had the quarter before. Our economy is still recovering from the recession and will take time to do so, I’m sure that we will see this happen again, but we will make progress and we will recover.

Unemployment due to lack of Confidence

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/employers-lack-confidence-not-skilled-labor/2013/05/05/757340c8-b411-11e2-9a98-4be1688d7d84_story.html

This article begins by discussing the possibility that the current unemployment problem is caused by a lack of skilled workers to fill positions. It then explains why this view is not necessarily tenable in the current environment and proposes that the unemployment problem is caused by a lack of confidence among employers.

A lack of confidence on the part of both businesses and consumers have been large contributors to the relatively slow pace of the current recovery. It would be a significant boost to the economy if it were possible to raise confidence, which can certainly be helped by both monetary and fiscal policy. A boost in business confidence could lower the unemployment rate further and help the economy recover faster.

Jobs Data Ease Fears of Economic Slowdown in U.S.

The recent government cuts had many Americans in fear as they were scared the jobs lost in the public sector might slow down the economy again. They feared that these jobs were too important to our fragile economy and might cause the already high unemployment to increase even more. However, these fears are slowly leaving the heads of most Americans as the private sector continues to increase employment. Last month alone private employers filled 176,000 workers with new jobs, which greatly outdoes the public sector layoff of only 11,000. The good news of the employment situation has even rubbed off onto the stock market. Investors have seen this growth as a good thing, causing the stock market climb. It is great to seen good healthy signs of economic recovery and it seems as though things are going to continue this way.

Housing prices hitting peaks

Home prices in 24 of the nation's top 200 housing markets have hit new peaks or are very close to their previous peak.  According to projections and continued increases, economists say many of these cities are likely to hit new peaks this year.  While dozens of housing markets are still far below their peak or where they stood prior to the housing bust in 2006, this is a good sign for the economy.  This is the beginning of a long process, but a positive beginning stage and secure place for the market to be headed in the future.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/05/04/house-price-gain-lifts-markets/2130811/

US spending up

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22339995

US consumer spending in March exceeded the forecasts unexpectedly. It rose by 0.2% according the commerce department. However, its the slowest increase in a while and marks a 'slowdown' but still was unexpected. Most of the increased spending was on utilities which was due to the extended winter. Consumer spending has helped the US economy absolve a 2.5% annualized rate of growth in the first quarter. There are fears that the spending that had occurred due to weather will be reversed as it gets warmer. 

Development in Africa

http://www.economist.com/blogs/baobab/2013/05/development-africa

This article tells of how Aftrica is one of the fastest developing nations. Some of Africa’s countries have been strolling with growth in income per person of more than 5% per year since 2007. However, one of these countries, Zambia, seems to have been left in the dust even though the economic growth is present.

A true statement mentioned in the article is that GDP is not the perfect measurement of living standards. Things like jobs, governance, health, and inequality are other worthy factors. Once you look at these indicators, it becomes more apparent that the “well-being in much of sub-Saharan Africa is lower than it ought to be, given rising average incomes per person,” as stated in the article.

The article also said, “Levels of well-being in South Africa are out of whack with its GDP per head. Kenya and Ghana do a much better job of reaping the benefits of a growing economy.”

Along with Kenya and Ghana, many other countries are in Africa that have improved their well-being the most, but the key to their success is being able to “translate” their growth into benefiting economic well-being. Zambia was not the best at doing that. The article doesn’t really specify how the most well off countries go about doing that, but I am assuming it has mostly to do with the government, how it acts with its policies, as well as how the public complies and keeps the economy and its markets going.

Bank of Canada Names New Govenor

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22392524

The Bank of Canada which is the equivalent to the United States US Federal Reserve has named a new governor Stephen Poloz.  Poloz wasn't the expected choice most thought who would replace Mark Carney who is going to go run the Bank of England.  Many thought that his senior deputy Tiff Macklem would be chosen, but Stephen Poloz is smart choice having for 25 years in Canadian public service and was the chief executive for Canada's export credit agency.   Poloz and six other members make up the committee that decides on the monetary policy of the Bank of Canada.  They use a method of general consensus rather than the Fed and Bank of England who vote and present reasons as to why certain measures should be taken.  It will be interesting to see if this will have any effect on the Canadian economy, but I believe they will still get by just fine.

For Retailers, Getting Out of Bangladesh isn't so Easy

Link: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-02/for-retailers-getting-out-of-bangladesh-isnt-so-easy#r=hp-ls

Bangladesh has carved itself out as a smaller China; a cheap place to send your business's labor. However, this comes with its own set of issues such as incredibly lax regulation. There have been incidents including but not limited to a factory collapse that occurred on April 30th of this year. Some companies like Disney have stated that they want to pull out of Bangladesh, but finding an equally cheap source of labor has proven to be difficult. Other areas with cheap labor like Bangladesh have similarly lax regulations. On Bangladeshi side, textile exports make up around 10% of their GNP, so a full pullout would result in heavy losses which leads to this problem being much more complex than just pulling out.