USA: Veksten i ledighet avtar

Det må være mange år siden vi er blitt positivt overrasket over at 345 000 flere personer er blitt arbeidsledige på en måned. Men dette er spesielle tider og USA hatt et svært vanskelig halvår. I dag var 345 000 nye arbeidsledige et langt lavere tall enn alle regnet med på forhånd. Financial Times skriver at:

"The US economy shed 345,000 jobs in May, bringing the unemployment rate to a 26-year high of 9.4 per cent, but offering a clear sign that the pace of job cuts is slowing, official figures revealed on Friday. The latest non-farm payrolls data were much better than the drop of 525,000 that economists were expecting and was nearly half of the average monthly job losses during the last six months. Although the number remains painfully high, it is a sharp improvement from April’s revised 504,000 and offers hope that the economy’s free-fall could be ending."

Noen bedrifter, som for eksempel Wal-Mart, varsler til og med at de skal ansette flere i tiden som kommer. Men det er likevel alt for tidlig å erklære at krisen er over. Mye kan gå galt fortsatt. Et eksemepel på dette er de problemene Latvia er kommet opp i som en konsekvens av finanskrisen:

"The showdown in Latvia is the latest chapter in the unrest in Eastern European financial markets, following drops in currencies in Ukraine and Hungary. Latvia's situation could spread to its neighbors, creating further headaches for Western European banks that made loans in the area. The Hungarian forint and the Polish zloty in particular faced selling pressure on Latvia's news. The situation also pits the interests of western European banks against some who see a devaluation as the quickest way to deal with the country's foreign debts and return to growth. Sweden's banks are the biggest players in the Baltics, controlling up to half the market there."