Datawatch: Intra-Asia exports’ long-term rise
Protectionist pledges by the US president-elect -particularly against China- might mean inter-Asia trade grows. About 60 per cent of goods exported by Asian countries now stay withing the region, up from 50 per cent in the early 2000s.
The FT’s Work and Careers team, part of the features department, is looking for a data journalist to work on our highly successful Business Education rankings.
This is an opportunity for an enthusiastic journalist with strong numerical and writing skills to work at the heart of one of the FT’s strongest brands. Read more
Datawatch: India’s traditional grocery shops
India last week scrapped all Rs500 ($7.50) and Rs 1,000 notes in a move designed to crack down on the black market. However, those notes are widely used in a country where family-run shops account for nearly all grocery sales.
Datawatch: US election social media mentions
Donald Trump’s social media mentions soared the day before last week’s vote, after being roughly level with Hilary Clinton’s in preceding days. Trump mentions topped 1m on November 7 while Mrs Clinton’s fell below 700,000
Datawatch: workers not getting their fair share from growth
The share of GDP taken by wages has been declining for most advanced countries, stoking claims that workers are not getting their fair share from growth. In the US and Japan it fell to 60 per cent in 2014 from 64 per cent in 2000.
Polish onion farmers weep over price collapse
Onion prices in Poland, a key producer in the EU, have fallen almost 60 per cent since the start of the year following a better than expected harvest.
Commodities data firm Mintec predicts that Polish production this year is up 15 per cent to some 630,000 tonnes as a result of favourable weather conditions during the growing season. Read more
Datawatch: poverty in the US
The lowest 10 per cent of US earners need to work longer than in other advanced nations to escape poverty. A single person needs to work about 20 hours a week in the UK, Italy, France and Japan, but more than 44 hours in the US.
Datawatch: world’s largest cities
Tokyo is still the world’s largest city with about 38m people, but Delhi, whose population has more than double over the past 20 years, could challenge it. Shanghai has passed Mumbai and New York to take third place.
Afghanistan, the world’s largest producer of illicit opiates, saw an estimated 10% increase in poppy cultivation in 2016. The potential for opium production grew 43% – the result of huge increases in the Northern region. Hectares eradicated fell by 91% because of the extremely poor security situation in many provinces.
London Heathrow is the busiest airport in Europe and the sixth busiest in the world by passenger traffic. The number of passengers using Heathrow grew 2.2 per cent in 2015 – slower than at many other European hubs
FT Factcheck: Do we use more land for golf courses than we do for homes?
It’s a startling stat: golf courses occupy more English land than housing does. The claim was first made by housing consultant Colin Wiles in 2013 and publicised by Britain’s biggest housing charity Shelter.
English golf courses occupy 270,000 hectares, he calculated – 2% of the total land area. By contrast 1.1% of England’s landmass is occupied by homes, according to official figures dug out by Shelter. It is a shocking contrast.
In the three years since Mr Wiles first published his estimate, his stat has taken on a life of its own, picking up news coverage (and wildly varying headlines) from outlets including Huffington Post and City AM. It popped up again last week in discussions about a hard-hitting new documentary on homelessness, “No Place To Call Home”.
The golf courses stat has become one of those bits of pub-quiz trivia with which to wow people at parties. But is it actually true?
Middle East conflicts have led to fourfold increase of refugees
Since 2005 the number of displaced migrants in the Middle East has grown fourfold, from about 5m to 23m. Much of this rise was the result of recent conflict in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
1 in 10 jobs have been “destroyed” since 2007
10 percent of jobs held by under-30s in OECD were lost from 2007 and 2015. The number of employed youth halved in Spain, Greece and Ireland.
Some countries, like Luxembourg and Chile actually saw an increase in the youth employment rate. This is mainly attributable to more young women taking up work. Read more
Israel and the US have the highest poverty rates in the developed world
Israel and the US have the highest poverty rates among OECD countries, according to this year’s Society at a Glance.
In both cases the problem appears to center around the lack of government intervention. Read more
Uber and other ride-hailing services have fueled a surge in the number of self-employed drivers in the US. Read more
More than 496m air passengers departed from, or arrived at, Europe’s 10 busiest airports in 2015, a 19 per cent increase from 2006. London’s Heathrow airport recorded an increase of 11.3 per cent, compared with Gatwick’s 18.1 per cent.
Datawatch: Ethiopia sprints ahead from 103rd to 66th largest economy in the world
Ethiopia’s economy has been expanding at an average annual rate of 10 per cent in the 12 years to 2016 and growth is expected to remain strong in the years ahead, supported by higher agricultural production, and large public sector and foreign direct investments. Read more
The gap between the most and least productive regions is widening
The productivity gap between top performing regions and others has widened by almost 60 per cent in two decades, according to a new OECD report released this week.
The difference in labour productivity between the top 10 per cent most productive OECD regions and the bottom 75 per cent grew from $15,200 to $24,000, in average GDP per worker, between 1995 and 2013. Read more
Mexico has the widest interregional gap between rich and poor, OECD finds
The OECD has found that although inequality across different OECD countries has narrowed in the last 20 years, within their own borders countries are witnessing increasing inequality. Mexico has the widest the gap between the richest and the poorest regions in terms of per capita GDP.
Soaring demand for designer clothing, leather goods and high-end jewellery is expected to drive sales of luxury items in India and Indonesia up more than half over the next four years. The luxury trade is predicted to rally in China and Russia, and grow steadily in Mexico and Brazil.
| About this blog | Feedback | Commenting |
Keith Fray heads the editorial statistics team, providing data for articles and graphics. His background is in economics, studying at Birkbeck College, London.
Federica Cocco is a statistics journalist at the FT. She previously covered UK politics, policy and statistics for The Times, the Daily Mirror and fact-checking organisation Full Fact.
Valentina Romei is a statistical researcher at the FT. She joined the FT in 2008 after working both as an academic and market researcher.
John Burn-Murdoch is a data journalist on the FT's interactive team, and writes the sport analytics column The Baseline. He joined the FT in 2013 and teaches data journalism at City University London.
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