Labor market
The labor market: unemployment, flexibility, automation
Global unemployment has never been lower: 4.9% in 2025. Yet more than 400 million people would like to work and cannot, and every month millions of jobs vanish while others are born. Behind a single number lies a mechanism in constant motion, one that automation and artificial intelligence promise to upend. Understanding the labor market means learning to read what the unemployment rate does not say.
Management: a century of theory, from control to agility
For equal pay, the gap between a motivated team and a resigned one comes down mostly to one person: the manager. Gallup credits managers with at least 70% of the variation in engagement. Yet companies are cutting middle managers faster than ever. A century of theory, from Taylorism to agile, explains this paradox and offers a lens for reading today's workplace.
Value creation: when a giant grows yet loses worth
Volkswagen wants to cut up to 100,000 jobs to restore profitability. Behind the clash lies a forgotten mechanism: a company can sell millions of vehicles and still destroy value once its return on capital falls below its cost of funding.
Germany’s pensions don’t add up: enter Sweden
Germany is debating a structural overhaul of its pension system, drawing on the Swedish model. What’s at stake in Berlin is not a simple parametric fix, it’s a question of whether a pay-as-you-go system can still absorb an accelerating demographic squeeze.
India is ageing, decades earlier than expected
India has just entered its demographic ageing phase, earlier than expected. A structural shift whose mechanical, long-term effects will unfold over decades.
International migration: flows, causes and impact
The countries tightening immigration rules the most are often those facing the sharpest labour shortages. This paradox is no accident: it reveals the structural tension between economics, demographics, and sovereignty that migration has exposed for thirty years.
China adds 3 years of work, the world will follow
On January 1, 2025, China raised its official retirement age for the first time in 70 years. It won’t be the last country to do so, and the mechanism driving that decision is the same one reshaping pension systems on every continent.
Retirement systems: demographics, funding and reform
In 1970, every retiree was backed by more than five workers. Today that ratio has collapsed, and most people don’t realize their pension system was never designed to survive this shift. A complete breakdown of how retirement funding works, why it’s under pressure, and what reform actually looks like.
Economic growth: sources, drivers and limits
GDP has multiplied by more than tenfold in advanced economies since 1950. Yet forecasters now expect the next decades to look nothing like the last. What actually drives growth, why it slows, and whether the historical model can still hold, the foundational concepts behind every economic outlook.
Economic inequalities: measurement and evolution
The richest 1% now hold more wealth than the bottom 50% combined. But that figure alone tells you less than you’d think, what matters is understanding how inequality is measured, why different metrics yield different conclusions, and what the data actually shows about its evolution over time.