Charting the Global Economy: Home Prices Soaring in U.S., U.K.

(Bloomberg) -- Lean housing inventory in the U.S. and U.K. has driven home prices to a record, constraining sales momentum, while business sentiment is improving in Germany and France.

Inflationary pressures across the globe are prompting more central banks -- including Mexico, the Czech Republic and Hungary -- to raise interest rates.

Here are some of the charts that appeared on Bloomberg this week on the latest developments in the global economy:

U.S.

Shipping bottlenecks and higher input prices have held back U.S. residential construction, contributing to skyrocketing prices for the limited supply of properties available and a drop in new-home sales.

At least 9 millions of Americans fell through the cracks of the unemployment assistance system, according to a a review of more than a year’s worth of Labor Department data.

Europe

German business confidence climbed to the strongest in more than two years in June, echoing a jump in France as the lifting of some pandemic restrictions allows services to resume activity.

U.K. house price growth slowed in June as record prices and a lack of properties to purchase drained momentum from the market.

Asia

China’s government is facing more calls to worry less about debt, with several influential economists arguing that authorities should follow the U.S. playbook and borrow more to spur the economy.

Japan must put at least a trillion yen ($9 billion) toward chip development this fiscal year and trillions more after that, if it is to have any hope of reviving its national industry, according to the government’s lead adviser on its new semiconductor strategy.

Emerging Markets

Mexico’s central bank surprised economists by switching to monetary tightening and delivering a small interest rate increase amid an inflation spike. Policy makers in Hungary and the Czech Republic also hiked rates this week.

Venezuela’s economy may have finally hit bottom. Hyperinflation has moderated and President Nicholas Maduro told Bloomberg he’s confident that output will expand slightly in 2021 after contracting about 80% since 2012.

Lebanon’s gross domestic product plunged to just above $19 billion last year, according to estimates by the International Monetary Fund, its lowest level since 2002 and worse than war-stricken Yemen.

World

Women took on 173 additional hours of unpaid child care last year, compared to 59 additional hours for men, a global study released by the Center for Global Development, a poverty non-profit, found. The gap widened in low- and middle-income countries, where women cared for children for more than three times as many hours as men did.

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