The US could be losing some key economic numbers and they're pretty important.
It's World Business Express from the BBC World Service.
I'm Leanna Byrne.
Africa's biggest e-commerce players rejecting warehouse automation, and Scotland plans to issue its first kilt bonds since the 17th century.
Now, the U.S. government shutdown may finally be coming to an end, but the fallout is not.
The White House says America's key economic data, things like the monthly jobs report and inflation numbers, may never be released for October.
Here's White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt.
The Democrat shutdown made it extraordinarily difficult for economists, investors and policymakers at the Federal Reserve to receive critical government data.
The Democrats may have permanently damaged the federal statistical system, with October CPI and jobs reports likely never being released.
And listen, I know, for most of us, these reports can feel a little abstract.
They're actually the backbone of how we understand what is happening in the economy.
So to talk about why this matters, I'm joined by KPMG's chief economist, Diane Swonk, who is in Chicago.
Diane, for an economist, was the first Friday of the month, Jobs Day, the best day of the month?
Well, it often was, except recently we've seen much worse numbers in the jobs data.
So it's been a little bit not quite as exciting as Christmas Day.
But to not get the data has really left us flying blind.
And most importantly, the Federal Reserve flying blind at this stage of the game.
There are two types of data here, right?
So there's the hard numbers that the businesses give and then there's the household surveys.
So why can't the government just go back and ask people now?
That's the hard part is when you go back and you're doing a survey.
You can certainly go back and find out who's been on payrolls in a given week and that we should be able to piece together.
But going back and saying in that given week that we could do a survey of October 12th or In crisis, there was no sampling done whatsoever during the month of October.
That's very hard to do because people's memory is not great.
You're not going to get the kind of depth of information from those household surveys as people try to remember what they were doing specifically in that week.
Did they miss a day because of child care or anything like that?
All of that sort of rich part of the data is very hard to get with a survey after the fact.
Now on the actual numbers of people who are on payrolls, though we should be able to go back and backfill some of that.
Another problem we're facing is that the statistical agencies are very short of staff.
The BLS in particular does the CPI and the employment data.
They're down 25 percent unemployment before the government shut it down, which had already meant more imputed data and more gaps.
I imagine, yeah, that would be really, really tough, Diane.
We've also got Emma Wall, Chief Investment Strategist at Hargreaves Lansdowne with us too.
So, Emma, how important is US economic data for the rest of the world?
In a word, very.
And, in particular, these two data points inflation and jobs are the two key data points that the Federal Reserve will look to before making a decision about interest rates.
And the decision that the Federal Reserve makes about interest rates obviously impacts domestic stocks, so the US stock market.
But because of the way that momentum works, the US stock market.
In turn, that positive or negative momentum will impact Asia and across the world, to Europe as well.
So whatever the Federal Reserve does really impacts global stock markets.
What do you think, Diane?
Big blind spot for the Federal Reserve right now?
No doubt about it, in fact.
Jay Powell himself had already warned people at the last press conference that there may not be enough data for the Fed to just make another cut in December as a foregone conclusion because of the holes in the data, most notably for inflation, at this time.
We're getting a lot more real-time data on employment than we do on inflation.
Okay, Diane Swan, going to say goodbye to you, KPMG's chief economist who is in Chicago.
Thank you so much.
And let's talk about a company some have hailed as the Amazon of Africa.
It's the e-commerce Jumia Group which offers online shopping, delivery and digital payment services in countries like Nigeria Kenya, Uganda and Egypt.
And while automated warehouses are becoming the norm worldwide, Jumia has opted to keep its operations manual.
Here's the group's CEO, Francis Dufay, speaking to the BBC.
Staff cost is relatively low, so we're OK hiring a lot of people in the warehouses.
For example, we have very low levels of automation.
That's not really something that's happening on our continent at this stage.
We're paying legal salaries, right?
So we have to be perfectly clean, of course.
We respect local regulation.
But of course, warehouse staff is not making a lot of money.
But when we look, I mean, we don't have to automate the warehouses.
That's one of the choices we can do.
Now Jumia sells its shares in the New York Stock Exchange and it's published its third quarter, dated today.
Emma Wall still with us.
Jumia, it struggled to turn a profit.
So what did you make of the results?
It's interesting because, although actually you know revenues up 25 year on year, it fell short of the market expectations and indeed the forecast.
The forecast was 50 million US dollars and actually it came in at 456 and shares are down in trading today.
They've been down as much as 2.5% this morning.
What's interesting is the market is tracking each quarter now to the expected that they said they would break even in Q4 2026.
So every quarter they slightly miss the mark, that becomes a much harder task.
Okay, Emma Wall, thank you.
Starbucks workers have launched an open-ended strike today across at least 40 US cities.
Time to hit Red Cup Day, one of the chain's biggest sales moments of the year.
Around 1000 unionised baristas are taking part, representing a tiny fraction of Starbucks' more than 17000 US stores.
But the union says it's prepared to escalate unless the company offers better pay hours and progress on a contract.
Scotland is about to return to the bond markets for the first time since the 17th century.
It's planning to sell almost $2 billion worth of their so-called kilts.
Emma Wall still with us.
These are obviously different from the Scottish kilts we all know, right?
They are indeed.
It's a bit of a play on words.
They've called them kilts because the UK government debt that's issued.
So UK government bonds are called kilts.
So a bit of a play on words.
What's interesting here is the scale involved.
So Scotland is... promising to, if the F&P get re-elected in May, issue 1.5 billion sterling.
That compares to 300 billion a year that the gilt market issues.
So, a bit of a minnowing comparison.
Is there an appetite for something like this globally?
It really depends on what the yield is.
So, what it investors get paid to take on that debt.
So, it's been given the same credit rating by Moody's as the UK.
But if it comes out with yields similar to the UK, investors are probably going to prefer the gilt market, because the gilt market has far more liquidity, being much larger.
And you want to, as a seller, make sure there's a buyer on the other end.
However, if there's a premium in that yield to reflect the lack of liquidity, potentially that will be enough to entice investors.
OK, Emma, here's another one for you.
Germany's shipping giant Hapag-Lloyd has reported a 50 drop in profits for the first nine months of the year, blaming volatile trade, security threats in the Red Sea and shifting US policies.
I mean, what does that all tell you about the state of global demand and the shipping cycle right now?
Yeah, unsurprising the stock market hasn't liked this news.
So, shares are down nearly 4%.
There's a couple of things here.
Some of this is sector specific.
You know, the shipping industry has been really hit over the last five years.
You have the pandemic, which has supply-side shocks.
You've got oil prices, you've got geopolitics, you've got inflation.
And obviously more recently in the last year tariffs, which really impacts supply business that is so dependent on import, export.
There's also some company specific things at play.
They haven't been that tight on spending.
They need to have much greater rigor.
And the CEO has admitted that.
And they plan to invest in 22 smaller container ships that they think will help boost profits.
And before you go, Emma, you might like this story.
If you've ever been told you can't make money from old rope, think again.
Got the artist David Shrigley up for this year's Turner Prize.
He's selling a 10-ton pile of old rope. priced at $1.2 million.
So there you go, Emma.
Maybe an investment for some.
I won't make comparisons with my five-year-old's art.
I'll leave it just there.
Nice one.
Emma Wall, Chief Investment Strategist at Hargreaves Lansdowne.
Thank you so much for joining us.
That is it from World Business Express with me, Leanna Byrne.
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