Juan Convers

At the end of last month Eurostats published a report with the updated unemployment rate figures across the Euro Area. The overall unemployment was 8.8% and even if the highest rates are still observed in Greece (20.6% Aug. 2017) and Spain (16.7%), they have the decreased compared to the previous year.

The lowest rates on the other hand were observed in October 2017: Czechia (2.7%), Malta (3.5%) and Germany (3.6%).

Wikipedia has an interesting article called Where to be Born Index where they discussed an article published by the economist about the classification of countries based on the criteria of which one provide the best opportunities for a healthy, safe and prosperous life in the years ahead.

Not surprising Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries are on top of the list joined by Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Singapore.

At the end of last month Eurostat published a report related to the Unemployment Rate in Europe. This reports shows how Germany, Malta and Czechia had the lowest rates, whole Greece and Spain still have the highest. Still it's remarkable how it has decrease both in Spain and Ireland.

A couple of days ago Eurostats published a report describing the annual inflation rate in the EU area and some other non-EU european countries. As you can observe in the map above the baltic countries had the highest inflation rates (Estonia: 3.6%, Lithuania: 3.5% and Latvia: 3.3%), While Romania (0.6%), Ireland (0.7%) and Slovakia (0.8%) had the lowest ones.

Eurostat updated its unemployment rates figures http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=une_rt_m&lang=en. Iceland has one the lowest unemployment rate in Europe (followed by the Czechia and Germany), while Greece still have the highest, followed by Spain.

The charts above contain unemployment data extracted from the Eurostat data sources. Even if the trend is going down it still quite high in countries such as Spain and Greece.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics published the unemployment figures for the month of January and the rate is low: 4.9%. It's one of the lowest unemployment rate since the whole financial crisis of 2008. The rate is half of what it was in the peak of October 2009:

Even if those are very good news for the American people, on the other hand the increase on the wages is still sluggish. In the last quarter of 2015 the rate was 1.9%. It was around 3% before the crisis hit hard.

If I were American I would ask those questions to the presidential candidates.