journalist Piervincenzo Canale

I just received via email a report from the OECD showing that unit labour costs are on the rise in the second quarter of 2009. For what concerns Italy the costs of labour are on the rise as well.

 

Unit labour costs rise strongly across OECD economies in second quarter 2009

Unit Labour Costs (ULC) for the total economy grew 0.8% in OECD countries in the second quarter of 2009 and rose 3.6% year-on-year. The strong growth was largely driven by falls in real output (gross domestic product at constant prices) due to the crisis.

The rise in unit labour costs for the total economy in the major seven economies was 0.7% in the second quarter of 2009 which was lower than the 1.3% recorded for the Euro area. Unit labour cost growth for the total economy in the United States remained at 0.6% for the second quarter of 2009, due mainly to a 1.6% fall in labour costs in market services.

Unit labour costs in industry grew 1.5% in the second quarter of 2009 in OECD countries and were up 7.2% year-on-year.

Lip Dub – Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger from amandalynferri on Vimeo.

I’ve got this email from FT.com and I think it’s very interesting and want to share it here.

LONDON: 5 November 2009: Islamic banking continues to see strong growth while conventional banking has stagnated, according to the 2009 Top 500 Islamic Financial Institutions in The Banker magazine’s November issue.

The assets held by fully sharia-compliant banks or Islamic banking windows of conventional banks rose by 28.6% to $822bn in 2009, from $639bn in 2008. This is a striking contrast to The Banker’s 2009 Top 1000 World Banks survey in July, which showed annual asset growth of just 6.8% at conventional banks. Islamic finance as an industry is building a solid track record: the compound annual growth rate for 2006-2009 is 27.86%, with assets forecast to hit $1033bn in 2010.
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