Official figures showed the unemployment rate rose unexpectedly to 5pc in the three months to March, while vacancies slumped to their lowest level in five years as businesses in the struggling retail and hospitality sectors pulled back from recruitment.
Irene has stopped by a hidden gambling table in a western suburb of Honiara to play Pass, a street card game gaining popularity in the Solomon Islands capital. There are dozens of these games dotted across the city, with new sites appearing regularly.
"It has nailed every recession since WWII without falsely predicting a downturn. If it is triggered, it may take a while for the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research to confirm it, but we are already in a recession."
"Even before the conflict, I thought recession and risks were on the rise. Recession risks are very high—and unless the hostilities are coming to an end now, I think recession is more than likely by the second half of the year."
The job market is struggling in the face of so many headwinds. Companies are going to be even more reluctant to hire this spring until the war ends and they can see consumers still spending. It's a tense time for the U.S. economy.
U.S. employers added a surprisingly strong 130,000 jobs last month, but government revisions cut 2024-2025 U.S. payrolls by hundreds of thousands. The unemployment rate fell to 4.3%, the Labor Department said Wednesday. The report included major revisions that reduced the number of jobs created last year to just 181,000, a third the previously reported 584,000 and the weakest since the pandemic year of 2020. The job market has been sluggish for months even though the economy is registering solid growth.
