Eurozone Unemployment hits record high of 12.2%

Unemployment in the troubled eurozone region hit a record high of 12.2% last month.
The latest official data from Eurostat shows nearly 100,000 additional people were out looking for work in April compared with the previous month, when unemployment was pegged at 12.1%.

The usual suspects -- Spain and Greece -- are facing the highest levels of unemployment. The latest data show unemployment levels of roughly 27% in both countries, with youth unemployment well above 50%.

Meanwhile, Austria and Germany have the lowest jobless levels out of the 17 countries that use the euro currency. Austria's unemployment was just below 5% in April and Germany's unemployment was 5.4%.

In total, 19.4 million people in the eurozone were unemployed in April.
To put that in context, Australia's population was just over 22 million at last count, a stark reminder of just how many people are struggling in Europe.

High youth unemployment has been particularly worrisome for politicians and European officials. Eurostat data show eurozone unemployment among those under the age of 25 topped 24.4% in April. Read more >>

Eurozone crisis: Unemployment rate hits new record high

The eurozone unemployment rate has hit a new record high of 11.8% in November, up from October's 11.7%. Eurostat reported that there are now 18.820 million people out of work in the euro area.

The wider EU unemployment rate remained at 10.7%,with 26.061m million men and women out of work. The lowest unemployment rates were recorded in Austria (4.5%), Luxembourg (5.1%), Germany (5.4%) and the Netherlands (5.6%).

Again, the highest rates were seen in Spain (26.6%). (In Greece, the most recent data shows a 26.0% rate in September 2012). Read more >>

Tiny gold bars latest rage for jittery investors

Private investors in Switzerland, Austria and Germany are lining up to buy gold bars the size of a credit card that can easily be broken into one gram pieces and used as payment in an emergency.
Now Swiss refinery Valcambi, a unit of U.S. mining giant Newmont, wants to bring its "CombiBar" to market in the United States and build up its sales presence India - the world's largest consumer of gold where the precious metal has long served as a parallel currency.

Investors worried that inflation and financial market turmoil will wipe out the value of their cash have poured money into gold over the past decade. Prices have gained almost 500 percent since 2001 compared to a 12 percent increase in MSCI's world equity index.

Sales of gold bars and coins were worth almost $77 billion in 2011, up from just $3.5 billion in 2002, according to data from the World Gold Council.

"The rich are buying standard bars or have deposits of phsyical gold. People that have less money are buying up to 100 grams," said Michael Mesaric, CEO of Valcambi "But for many people a pure investment product is no longer enough. They want to be able to do something with the precious metal."

Mesaric said the advantage of the "CombiBar" - which has been dubbed a "chocolate bar" because pieces can be easily broken off by hand into one gram squares - is that it can be easily transported and costs less than buying 50 one gram bars. Read more >>

TV Stations May Start Using Military Drones Like ‘Any Other Type of News-Gathering Equipment’

The Camcopter, a drone developed for military use by Austria’s Schiebel Corporation, could very well be used by television stations and other journalists to gather news in the very near future. Considering the rise of the use of military drones in concert with law enforcement, the undeniable increase in domestic drone operations and pending explosive growth of drone use in the United States, I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised to see drones being used in news gathering as well.

According to a recent article by TV News Check, drones could be used in the newsgathering process as early as 2015 thanks to the legislation accelerating the integration of drones into the U.S. national airspace passed earlier this year. The Schiebel Corporation has partnered with Brain Farm and Snaproll Media, both U.S. companies, in order to turn the Camcopter into a platform capable of capturing high-definition, broadcast-quality footage.

Some clearly see a bright future for the use of drones in various commercial applications and especially in the field of journalism. University of Nebraska-Lincoln journalism professor Matt Waite was given a $50,000 grant from the Knight Foundation to start up the “Drone Journalism Lab” last November. Read more >>

40 percent of U.S. workers don’t get paid for vacation or sick days

About 40 percent of U.S. workers, or more than 55 million Americans, don’t get paid when they take vacation or sick days, the government reported.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said in a report yesterday that leave policies by U.S. employers tend to be a patchwork of individual arrangements that favor healthy, well-educated professional employees.
The report underscores how the U.S. is lagging on such policies.

It’s the only advanced economy without a national leave policy guaranteeing a break for employees, said John Schmitt, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. Austria guarantees as many as 43 paid days off, and a young German worker can take as many as 40.

“Of the 15 most economically developed countries, 14 have sick and vacation time off,” Schmitt said in a telephone interview. “We’re the outlier.” Read more >>

Gold vending machines to be installed in Germany, Austria, Switzerland

German company plans to install vending machines where you can get gold. They open its first machine at Frankfurt airport.