Friday, November 14, 2008

007 in ...

... the Fourth Cod War




Weather outside: Snow/rain, 2°C

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Unemployment...

The direct result to the financial crisis that has hit most countries and most severely Iceland is the rise of the unemployment figures.

This was not obvious yet as September was only the beginning of the crisis and with most people getting 3 months notice the unemployment figures are not yet relevant.

Everyday brings its lot of bad news about compagnies firing some of their workforce: all staff of the free TV channel Skjár 1 were let go, the electronic stores BT have closed their doors, the financial newspaper Viðskiptablaðið is not published anymore, etc... Even Stöð 2, a paying channel, has stopped presenting the news at lunch time... which is good actually!!! I was getting sick of hearing the same thing over and over and over again.

Yesterday, the Directorate of labour published the figures for the unemployment for October 2008. The unemployment is now at 1.9%, up from 1.3% last month. This is not much but when you look at the overall picture of the unemployment for the past 2 years, this is a big jump.

And the future is bleak as they are predicting the unemployment figure to be between 3.3%-3.8% and December won't be better...

Weather outside: Rain, 3°C