{"id":9627,"date":"2024-08-30T09:47:55","date_gmt":"2024-08-30T08:47:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/?p=9627"},"modified":"2024-08-30T09:47:57","modified_gmt":"2024-08-30T08:47:57","slug":"four-day-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/it\/four-day-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Four Day Week"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Friday Feeling<\/strong><\/h5>\n
Check out this week’s additions to our 2024 playlist here!<\/a><\/h5>\n
Starmer\u00a0<\/strong>– Muudu, Sander M\u00f6lder<\/h5>\n
Into the Rose Garden\u00a0<\/strong>– Mixing Memory<\/h5>\n
Low Budget\u00a0<\/strong>– The Kinks<\/h5>\n
This Is Going to Hurt\u00a0<\/strong>– Beachcomber<\/h5>\n
Don’t Look Back In Anger\u00a0<\/strong>– Oasis<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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Four Day Week<\/h2>\n <\/div>\n
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Employees in the UK could be afforded the right to work a four-day week following government plans to increase flexibility in the workplace. According to the plans \u2013 which could be scheduled to go through parliament in Autumn \u2013 workers could seek to compress their hours into four working days unless it is \u201cnot reasonably feasible\u201d.<\/p>\n

Presently, most four-day working weeks are still in trail phases. In 2022, the Reykjav\u00edk City Council took part in a four-day week trial involving 2,500 (represented 1% of the Iceland\u2019s total workforce) in what was the world\u2019s largest study of its kind so far. The purpose of the trails was twofold, firstly to improve employee\u2019s work\/life balance and secondly to increase productivity. Indeed, given that Iceland has the longest duration of working life (47 years) in the world, any increase in productivity and public perception of work is seen as worthwhile investment. The success of the trials prompted Icelandic unions to renegotiate working patterns and now as the study indicates, \u201c86% of Iceland’s workforce has either moved to shorter hours for the same pay or will gain the right to\u201d.<\/p>\n

Similarly, in New Zealand, Unilever spent time looking into the four-day week with assistance from Sydney’s University of Technology while in 2019 Microsoft trialled a four-day work week in Japan.<\/p>\n

Though both trails were seen favourably by employers and employees alike, their impact on the labour market has been minimal compared to the study in Reykjav\u00edk. Critics also argue that compressing hours could lead to a drop in productivity.<\/p>\n

As the private and public sector experiment with the four-day working week, the Labour government\u2019s plans could represent the greatest change to the working week in generations.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

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French Inflation<\/h2>\n <\/div>\n
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French inflation has fallen to its lowest level since August 2021, according to fresh data from INSEE. Annual inflation dropped to 1.9%, having eased 40bps from last month\u2019s print of 2.3%, but came some 10bps above market expectations.<\/p>\n

The fall in inflation was chiefly driven by an easing of energy prices from the previous year, with cost pressures on petrol and electricity both subsiding.<\/p>\n

While the fall in inflation will be welcome news to policy makers in Frankfurt, monthly CPI rose at its fastest rate since February having risen 0.6% between July and August. This marked a significant increase from July\u2019s 0.2% print and was driven in part by a rise in clothing and footwear costs.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

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US GDP<\/h2>\n <\/div>\n
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Yesterday afternoon, the release of preliminary US GDP figures indicated that the world\u2019s largest economy grew 3% over the course of the second quarter of this year. With the general market consensus pointing to a 2.8% (annualised) print, yesterday\u2019s figures helped to assuage recessionary fears which resurfaced earlier this month. The print also marked a 20bps increase from the first round of preliminary figures.<\/p>\n

The growth was driven in part by increased consumer spending, which came in at 2.9% – considerably higher than the 2.3% figure which was previously reported. Private inventory investment also rose sharply to 7.5% as did fixed investment which rose to 4.6%. Imports also showed signs of rising to 7%.<\/p>\n

as markets look for further insight into the health of the economy and the extent to which this could influence the Federal Reserve\u2019s monetary policy pathway.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

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US PCE<\/h2>\n <\/div>\n
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According to preliminary figures from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, PCE came in at 2.5% over the second quarter of the year. This follows the previous quarter\u2019s print which came in at 3.4% (which itself was 1.6 percentage points higher than Q4 2023\u2019s value. It also marks a significant departure from the recent peak seen in Q1 2022, where the index rose to 7.7%<\/p>\n

When looking annualised core PCE which excludes food and energy, prices increased 2.8% having risen 3.7 percent in Q1.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friday feeling, four day week prospect for UK, falling French inflation, release of preliminary US GDP data, and US PCE comes in lower than previous quarter.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":1592,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"rp-language":[16],"class_list":["post-9627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-morning-updates","rp-language-en_gb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9627"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9641,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9627\/revisions\/9641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9627"},{"taxonomy":"rp-language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncourtfx.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rp-language?post=9627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}