Unemployment Hits 9.5%

     Unemployement hit 9.5 percent the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced Thursday, after Americans lost 467,000 more jobs in June, contributing to the now 14.7 million unemployed Americans.

Deflation Lurks in Europe

     A flash estimate of the June inflation rate for EU countries using the euro currency came in negative, with -0.1% rate. That negative rate followed a month of perfect equipoise at 0.0% inflation for June, possibly suggesting a deflationary trend. The estimates are issued by Eurostat, the EU's statistical agency.

EU Consumer Study Finds Half Live in Apartments, Third Speak 2d Language

     A study done on European Union consumer habits found that 65 percent of dwellings are owned by their residents, 12 percent of household energy comes from renewable sources, 46 percent of dwellings are apartments and a third of shoppers are able to use another EU language while shopping in another country.
     The study, based on surveys conducted in 2007, found that Germany has the lowest homeownership at 46 percent, while Romania has the highest at 96 percent. Half the energy used in Latvian households comes from renewables, the greatest proportion in the EU. Malta uses no renewable energy in households and the United Kingdom comes in second to Malat with only 0.8 percent.

US Imprisons Ten Times More Than EU Nations


     The United States imprisons ten times more people on average than the northern European countries of Denmark, Sweden and Ireland and holds more than six times the proportion held by the European Union as a whole. A Eurostat study finds that the union had 123 prisoners for every 100,000 inhabitants between 2005 and 2007, compared to 758 in the United States.
     Even Latvia, which has the greatest prisoner ratio in the EU at 293, has less than half the U.S. proportion. Slovenia had the lowest rate, at only 60 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants.