Business and Finance News

The OECD said today that 90,000 persons in Ireland have been without a job for 3 years and it said Ireland’s high inequality of market incomes largely reflects its uneven distribution of labour earnings. Only 50% of the individuals in the 20-30 age gro…

Average real (inflation-adjusted) pay may return in 2007 levels in 2017 if inflation remains low according to a report that was published last weekend. The Resolution Foundation (RF), the UK think-tank, has today followed up with a report on the National Living Wage (NLW), which was proposed by George Osborne, the chancellor, in a budget last July — one in four workers will get a pay rise from the new national living wage according to the research. The impact will be greatest in hospitality, retail and support services.

High investment in school computers and classroom technology does not improve pupils’ performance, according to a global study from the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development). The think-tank for 34 mainly developed country governments said Tuesday that schools have yet to take advantage of the potential of technology in the classroom to tackle the digital divide and give every student the skills they need in today’s connected world, according to the first OECD PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment, which assesses the education skills of 15-year olds every 3 years in over 70 economies) assessment of digital skills.

Innovation & Productivity: Productivity like the issue of pensions tends to trigger glazed-over eyes but it’s key to growth and incomes and how working smarter not working harder can benefit people around the world. New OECD research shows that the…

Robert Shiller, Nobel prize-winning economist and a professor of economics at Yale University, is best known for the Shiller P/E (price/earnings) multiple, which has produced accurate valuations of the US stock market. In recent years it has grown cont…

The El Niño weather pattern, which originates in the Pacific Ocean is now well underway and is growing in strength according to British scientists. This is likely to have widespread regional impacts and to continue to contribute to raised global average temperatures this year and next – after a 15-year “cool” phase, during which the Pacific Ocean has dragged down the world’s average surface temperature, the signs are it has entered a “warm” phase, according to Prof Adam Scaife of the UK Met Office.

While recent volatility in financial markets has unsettled the global economy, the world should have confidence in China’s future, Li Keqiang, Chinese premier, on Thursday told participants in the opening plenary of the World Economic Forum’s ninth Ann…

Global food commodity prices continued to decline in August as ample supplies, a slump in energy prices and concerns over China’s economic slowdown all contributed to the sharpest fall of the FAO Food Price Index in almost 7 years. A substantial drop i…

On a seasonally adjusted basis, initial estimates indicate that Irish GDP (gross domestic product) in volume terms increased by 1.9% for the second quarter of 2015 according to the CSO today. Growth in GNP (gross national product) also increased by 1.9…

Attention is turning in Germany to providing jobs for the hundreds of thousands of refugees who are expected to arrive in the country in coming years. Reuters reports that a record 104,460 asylum seekers arrived in Germany last month, part of an unprecedented wave of refugees and migrants straining the resources of German towns and villages. Germany, with relatively liberal asylum laws and generous benefits, is the EU’s biggest recipient of people fleeing war in the Middle East and economic migrants from southeastern Europe.