... a "back of the envelope" calculation suggests it will take one hundred and sixty-two months -- over a decade -- to reduce unemployment to the 5% level extant before the recession hit in December 2007.

The unemployment rate, based on a Labor Department survey of households, is the share of the work force (people with jobs plus people seeking jobs) who are unemployed. Out of a workforce of 153.4 million people, there were 14.1 million unemployed in June.

The Labor Department’s payroll figures are based on a separate “establishment” survey of employers that doesn’t include some workers, like farmhands, included in the household tally.

To get around this, assume employment in the household survey increases at the same rate as employment in the employer survey did in the first half of 2011. That implies a gain of 1.2%, or about 1.6 million employed, over the next year.

Mr Lahart's estimate also factors-in labor force growth. He explains: "If we assume that it grows at the same pace as the Census projects for the working age population – people aged 16 and over – it will increase by about 1.4 million people next year.

"With employment growing just a smidge faster than the labor force, then, the unemployment rate would still be a disappointingly high 8.9% in June 2012. The October 2012 unemployment rate — the last one we’ll see before Election Day — would edge down to 8.8%. And it wouldn’t reach 5% until December 2024."

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... 74% of e-commerce departments and businesses have increased their turnover since 2010 - with another 60% of e-businesses looking to increase staff numbers over the next twelve months. IMRG hails the increase in employment opportunities as "welcome news for the under pressure UK job market".

Bullish though all this might seem, the current employment figure is considerably lower than originally anticipated. Last year, over 80% of those surveyed said they hoped to recruit over the coming months. But the actual number of companies that recruited new members of staff is 17.45% lower than the predicted figure and - paradoxically - is likely to be attributed to the recent and rapid growth of the m-commerce market.

Explains Chris Russell, director at eDigitalResearch: “As we continue to see the popularity of smartphones and other emerging channels increase with consumers, retailers are beginning to merge and combine multiple departments and operations in order to create a coherent message across the board for all of their customers.

"This is not to say that the e-commerce jobs market is beginning to decline. It simply means that, along with everything else in the e-commerce industry, it is evolving in order to cope with the shifting consumer trends we are witnessing.”

Nearly half of the e-tailers surveyed (43.24%) suggested that up to 50% of their total revenue is generated via the internet. More importantly, another 40% (41.08%) indicated that 91-100% of overall revenue comes from e-commerce channels, an increase of 4% on the same figures last year.

It also reflects the continued growth of the e-commerce industry and the importance of dedicated e-commerce teams and staff members.
 

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... a multi-currency system worldwide. Emerging countries "are narrowing the gap with developed nations by developing their middle-class and improving their life quality," Camdessus said at the 14th Annual Meeting of the Christian Association for Company Directors in Argentina.

"By 2050 we can expect that close to 80 percent of the global economic growth will be a result of emerging countries,"he told delegates.

The monetary and finance system will in the future "be renewed so that emerging countries are recognized, changing from a dollar-dominated system to a multi-currency one," Camdessus opined.

[Editor's Note: Whether M. Candussus' prediction is to be taken seriously is open to question. The East Asian financial crisis, which occurred during his tenure at the helm of the IMF, triggered widespread criticism for failing to take into account the unique circumstances of the East Asian nations. This led to the imposition of a draconian fiscal regime that provoked turmoil and rioting in countries such as Indonesia.]

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... China’s economy set to surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now. 

Comments MarketWatch's Brett Arends: "It provides a painful context for the budget wrangling taking place in Washington right now. [The IMF's forecast] raises enormous questions about what the international security system is going to look like in just a handful of years. And it casts a deepening cloud over both the US dollar and the giant Treasury market, which have been propped up for decades by their privileged status as the liabilities of the world’s hegemonic power."

Arends continues: "According to the IMF forecast, which was quietly posted on the Fund’s website just two weeks ago, whoever is elected US president next year — Obama? Mitt Romney? Donald Trump? — will be the last to preside over the world’s largest economy.

"Most people aren’t prepared for this. They aren’t even aware it’s that close. Listen to experts of various stripes, and they will tell you this moment is decades away. The most bearish will put the figure in the mid-2020s.

"But they’re miscounting. They’re only comparing the gross domestic products of the two countries using current exchange rates. That’s a largely meaningless comparison in real terms. Exchange rates change quickly. And China’s exchange rates are phony. China artificially undervalues its currency, the renminbi, through massive intervention in the markets."

In addition to comparing the two countries based on exchange rates, the IMF analysis also examined in depth the true, real-terms picture of the economies using “purchasing power parities” [PPP].

This compares what people earn and spend in real terms in their domestic economies.

Under PPP, the Chinese economy will expand from $11.2 trillion this year to $19 trillion in 2016.

Meanwhile the size of the US economy will rise from $15.2 trillion to $18.8 trillion. That would take America’s share of the world output down to 17.7%, the lowest in modern times. China’s would reach 18%, and rising.

Just ten years back, the US economy was three times larger than China’s.


 

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... revenue from online and mobile games will grow from a third to a half of the industry’s total revenues, at around $44bn, by 2014.

Within that total, China is predicted to account for up to half of global sales, meaning the Chinese games market will have risen from around 12% in 2010 to a quarter of the world’s total by 2014. Over the same period, America's share of the games market will fall from 26% to 22%.

In the interim, traditional console games – the business segment led by Activision-Blizzard and Electronic Arts – will be flat or even negative.

“We expect to see Chinese companies as major games consolidators in 2011,” forecasts Tim Merel, managing director of Digi-Capital. He cites as a taste of things to come the recent acquisition by Chinese giant Tencent of Los Angeles firm Riot Games.

Tencent’s domestic market already delivers huge volumes of online gamers – 20 million simultaneous players at peak time.

Merel predicts 18% compound annual growth rate for online and mobile games until 2014, powered by an influx of venture-capital investment.

Chinese games companies such as Shanda, ChangYou.com and Giant are already achieving billion-dollar stock-market valuations.

Merel paints a doomsday scenario for major US and European games companies. "Tencent’s market cap (around $50bn) is substantially more than Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, GamesStop, Take2, THQ, Atari, Game Group and Ubisoft combined,” he warns.

As a consequence of which Merel expects Asian companies to drive more of the international consolidation over the coming years as they expand beyond their home markets.
 

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... the global financial crisis has accelerated the shift in economic power to developing countries. And that China will overtake the USA as the world's largest economy by 2032.

The report also foretells that by the same date the economic output of such emerging markets as China, India, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey - the so-called E7 - will overtake that of the established G7 nations of the US, Japan, Germany, UK, France, Italy and Canada.

PwC also projects that India will achieve the most significant increase in share of global economic output, rising from just 2% now to about 13% by 2050.

And come 2050 it too could be close to catching the US.

In the three months to the end of September, India's GDP grew at an annual rate of 8.9%, while Chinese GDP expanded at an annual rate of 9.6%.

By contrast, the US economy grew at an annual pace of 2.6% during the same period, while the eurozone grew by just 0.4%.
 

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... China will remains the most popular investment destination for at least the next three years.

The survey suggests an increasing number of Japanese companies are aiming to diversify their offshore investment amid caution about rising labour costs and anti-Japanese demonstrations in China.

An additional survey conducted in November in the wake of the Senkaku Islands stand-off provided further evidence of this trend.

China no longer dominates Japanese foreign investment and companies "are increasingly turning their attention to such (emerging) markets as India and Vietnam," said JBIC economist Toshiharu Mimura.

In the survey, which allowed multiple responses, 74.9% of the 605 manufacturers named India as an investment destination over the next ten years, compared with 71.7% that named China. This reverses the order of preference reported in the preceding year's survey.
 

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

Some five hundred Wipro employees are currently amid a pilot programme that studies the potential of a trend that could change the way in which the global outsourcing industry works. It centres around a central computing “cloud” – or in lay terms, a collection of shared servers and software.

According to the company, the pilot has made it possible to set up a new cloud network project, including sourcing servers and hiring staff, within 36 minutes - as opposed to the forty-three days such projects normally take. With cloud systems in place, all the necessary computing power and software is on hand virtually instantly.

Compatriot Indian groups Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys Technologies are thought to be following suit. In toto, the Indian IT industry is expected to generate export revenues of $56bn by March 2011, a 13% increase on the projected figure for the current year.

It is likely there are sweaty palms at western-headquartered global rivals such as IBM, Accenture and Cap Gemini!

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

According to NASSCOM, the premier trade body representing India's IT and business process outsourcing industries, there is likely to be a marked increase in Asia’s share of the world’s IT services market. That premise is based on a report jointly prepared by global beancounter KPMG and AOCIO - the Asian-Oceanian Computing Industry Organisation

It predicts that over the next decade Asia in toto will account for 26.3% of the global consumption of IT and business-process outsourcing services, rising from todays's approximate figure of 20%.

This trend will almost certainly spark a reversal of Indian IT companies' practice of despatching sales staff to Western markets in a bid to divert business from the likes of IBM and Accenture - a strategy that has paid handsome dividends for the companies - if not their workers.

[Still, these days a job is a job is a job - even if you work in an air-conditioned battery farm and live in a slum hovel on the inner perimeter of Mumbai.]

The 'snatch tactics' pursued by local IT companies over the past two decades have propelled what was once a cottage industry into a multibillion-dollar business that NASSCOM predicts will generate exports of $56bn by March 2011.

According to Jim Champy, who chairs Dell Services’ consulting practice, IT outsourcing across Asia has embarked on a decades-long parabola of growth as Asian firms update their business methodology and technologies

Champy sees "... As most providers do, the Asian markets growing faster; clearly more than Europe and certainly faster than the United States ... two to three times faster, percentage-wise.”

Congratulations, Jim, you have won MarketingTomorrow's Oxymoron of the Month Award!

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

Says Naascom chairman Pramod Bhasin:"With a renewed value proposition, we look forward to a terrific future, with growth estimates of 13%-15% in 2010-2011 for the export sector and 15%-17% for the India market."

Moreover, growth is not restricted geographically to the Indian subcontinent, reports the association's president Som Mittal, who added that that the sector had also increased its worldwide workforce by recruiting IT specialists in developed countries.

Indian IT companies have extended their tentacles to over sixty nations and boast some 450 delivery centres worldwide.

Commenting on this trend, Forrester Research analyst Sudin Apte acknowledged: "We are still far from the [pre-crash] glory days, but the IT industry is understandably upbeat as it’s aware that western companies have tight budgets and will need to outsource to cut costs.This means there will be more business for Indian [software] exporters.”

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.