Microeconomics

Reflecting on Labor Day on Monday State Minister and government spokesman Akis Skertsos presented the work of the government and, ahead of the upcoming elections in May, presented its program of four points that will improve the labor market.

The measures introduced by the government to support incomes were significant, however, they could make up for the high cost incurred by employers due to social security contributions.

In 2022, the total poverty line for Bulgaria was BGN 525.92 per household member per month. With this size of the poverty line, 1.5719 million people, or 22.9% of the country's population, were below the poverty line, according to data from the National Statistical Institute.

Based on the Cypriot government's timeline, the introduction of e-kalathi, a new digital platform for monitoring retail product prices, is expected to take place around early 2024. The bill has been given the green light by the Council of Ministers and will soon be presented to the Parliament.

Once passed, e-kalathi will be available as a smartphone application for consumers to use.

Registered unemployment totaled 1,035,580 in March, down 5.2% from March 2022 and down 3.6% from February 2023, the state manpower authority said on Thursday.

More specifically, 533,314 unemployed (51.5% of total) were long-term unemployed, 370,903 were men (35.8%) and 664,677 were women (64.2%).

The new minimum wage of €780 a month has come into force as of April 1, after an increase of 9.4% on the previous level.

Accordingly, the minimum daily wage has also gone up, to €34.84, an increase of €5.80 on its February 2019 rate.

New York's iconic Flatiron Building, famous for its thin, triangular shape, has sold at auction for $190 million following a court order.

The 22-story skyscraper, built in 1902 and often said to resemble a clothes iron, fetched almost four times the opening price of $50 million following a keen bidding war.

The number of unemployed people aged 15-years-old and over decreased by 337,000 to 3.58 million in 2022 compared to the previous year, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) announced on March 23.

The unemployment rate decreased by 1.6 percentage points to 10.4 percent, being estimated at 8.9 percent for men and 13.4 percent for women.

Registered unemployment fell 3.2% or by 35,068 persons in February compared with the same month last year and was down 1.5% in comparison with January 2023, official figures showed on Monday.

An intensive effort by Cyprus' Tax Department in recent months has resulted in rebates of over 70 million euros of excess taxes, with an additional €200 million expected to be paid, according to the head of the department, Sotiris Markides.

He emphasized that the Tax Department aims to clear all outstanding corporate and individual taxpayer rebates by the end of 2023.