WORLD’S BIGGEST EMPLOYERS

If you had to guess, who would you say are the world’s five biggest employers ? Would they include any food and drink companies ?

The Financial Times printed a top five on 23rd June, sourced from ONS and Labour Force Survey:

1. People’s Liberation Army, China 2.26 million
2. Wal-Mart, United States 2.10 million
3. National Health Service, United Kingdom 1.56 million
4. Indian railways 1.41 million
5. Indian army 1.13 million

So Wal-Mart is by far the world’s largest private sector employer, with food and drink making a major contribution.

By comparison, the world’s largest food and drink producer Nestlé has 283,000 employees.

LIVING LONGER, MUCH LONGER

Some charts are just brilliant. They say so much. Here’s another one I saw last week. It shows how our life expectancy has grown in the last century, compared with the previous two thousand years. In terms of social change, it’s hard to convey more with just one line.

Click on the graph to enlarge

GLOBAL DOWNTURN

They say a picture paints a thousand words. Sometimes charts do too. Look at this one from The Economist ten days ago. Consistent global economic growth at 4% for years, then suddenly …

I wonder how quickly we’ll be back to 4% growth and what shape this graph will look like in two years’ time.