Autumn Statement 2011: Eight million people to work longer to get state pension

Hochtief AG, Germany’s largest construction company, agreed to sell its airports division to Public Sector Pension Investment Board of Canada as it narrows its focus to building. The deal values the business, which has stakes in airports in Athens, Budapest, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Sydney and Tirana, at about 1.5 billion euros (US$2 billion) and Hochtief will get 1.1 billion euros as some shares are held by business partners, the Essen, Germany-based builder said in a statement.

The BBC reports that unemployment has risen at its slowest rate since July 2008. What it doesn’t do is point out why.One reason is that economic inactivity has increased. People who would otherwise show up in the unemployment numbers have simply dropped out of the workforce.

With today's jobs number due out shortly, it is worth pointing out some of the key trends that we have observed in the underlying data stripped of month-to-month seasonal variance, which expose the "quality" side of the US non-recovery, instead of the far more manageable "quantity" side.

The retirement crisis in America is fairly well defined: Six in 10 people expect to delay retirement; just 14% are confident they’ll have enough to live comfortably and 17% say they will never be able to quit work altogether. If that doesn’t bring you down, make sure you tune in to the PBS Frontline special Retirement Gamble tonight. Serious depression is sure to follow. Hopefully, though, so will remedial action on the part of anyone who identifies with the handful of struggling working class Americans in this documentary. Retirement doesn’t break new ground.

The retirement crisis in America is fairly well defined: Six in 10 people expect to delay retirement; just 14% are confident they’ll have enough to live comfortably and 17% say they will never be able to quit work altogether. If that doesn’t bring you down, make sure you tune in to the PBS Frontline special Retirement Gamble tonight. Serious depression is sure to follow. Hopefully, though, so will remedial action on the part of anyone who identifies with the handful of struggling working class Americans in this documentary. Retirement doesn’t break new ground.

The retirement savings crisis in America is so acute that at least one prominent thinker on the subject is calling for a mandatory savings program above and beyond existing 401(k) and other pension plans. “The nation requires a new, mandatory tier of retirement accounts, initiated by the federal government but managed by the private sector, that will replace about 20% of pre-retirement earnings,” Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, told Bloomberg News.

The retirement savings crisis in America is so acute that at least one prominent thinker on the subject is calling for a mandatory savings program above and beyond existing 401(k) and other pension plans. “The nation requires a new, mandatory tier of retirement accounts, initiated by the federal government but managed by the private sector, that will replace about 20% of pre-retirement earnings,” Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, told Bloomberg News.