Empowering people with data

Sep 21, 2023 | Water Transport

Monthly container freight rate index worldwide 2019-2023

Container freight rates oscillated dramatically between January 2019 and August 2023. The year 2021 saw an especially steep increase in global freight rates, reaching a record price of nearly 10,400 U.S. dollars in September 2021. In August 2023, the global freight rate index stood at over 1,700 U.S. dollars.

How did we get here? The global supply chain is a fragile system consisting of numerous links and disruption to one can send cascading effects down the chain. that need to function properly for the whole system to work. The COVID-19 pandemic turned out to be an event of such a magnitude to either bring to halt whole industries and supply chains, or severely reduce their efficiency. Due to its complexity and transcontinental nature, container shipping was hit especially hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the start of the pandemic, the shipping industry has had to struggle with port closures and congestions, labor shortages, difficulties with capacity utilization, as well as a lack of new shipping containers.

Container carriers profiting While costs of operating a container fleet have increased, the surge in freight rates has not served just to cover rising expenses. Container ship operators have been reporting record-high operating profit margins since the beginning of the pandemic. In the third quarter of 2021, main container shipping companies had an average profit margin of over 56 percent, up from about 8.5 percent two years earlier. Some of the carriers are using these profits to increase their carrying capacity by buying new containers and ordering new container ships. However, the delivery of these newly ordered ships is still years away.

Sep 13, 2023 | Social Media & User-Generated Content

X/Twitter Premium subscriber count 2023

X Premium subscription service to X (formerly Twitter) costing users eight U.S. dollars per month. X Premium allows users to add a blue checkmark to their account, which was once a feature only given to verified profiles. The service also offers access to premium features, such as the ability to edit published tweets. As of April 2023, it was reported that there were around 640 thousand X Premium subscribers.

Sep 17, 2023 | Infrastructure

Number of data centers worldwide 2023, by country

As of September 2023, there were a reported 5,375 data centers in the United States, the most of any country worldwide. A further 522 were located in Germany, while 517 were located in the United Kingdom.

A data center is a network of computing and storage resources that enables the delivery of shared software applications and data. These centers can house large amounts of critical and important data, and therefore are vital to the daily functions of companies and consumers alike. As a result, whether it is a cloud, colocation, or managed service, data center real estate will have increasing importance worldwide.

In the past, data centers were highly controlled physical infrastructures, but the cloud has since changed that model. A cloud data service is a remote version of a data center – located somewhere away from a company's physical premises. Cloud IT infrastructure spending has grown and is forecast to rise further in the coming years. The evolution of technology, along with the rapid growth in demand for data across the globe, is largely driven by the leading hyperscale data center providers.

Sep 15, 2023 | Hotels

Selected cities with the highest hotel rates in the U.S. as of September 2023

As of September 2023, the average price for a hotel room in Miami was 198 U.S. dollars. Meanwhile, New York had an average rate of 504 U.S. dollars. New York had the most expensive hotel rate of the selected major cities that month.

Sep 13, 2023 | Key Economic Indicators

U.S. monthly inflation and core inflation rates 2020-2023

In August 2023, the inflation rate of the consumer price index increased by 3.7 percent when compared to August 2022. This is, however, a reduction in the growth of the consumer price index seen over the last two years. Core inflation has held more steady, although dropping slightly in August 2023.

Sep 19, 2023 | Digital Shopping Behaviour

E-commerce consumer penetration in Europe 2022, by country

What is the market share of online shopping in Europe? Within the EU-27, 68 percent of consumers aged 16 to 74 years used e-commerce at least once in 2022. The country with the highest e-commerce penetration was Norway, with around 92 percent of its people purchasing goods or services online. Percentages were different among the European countries, though. In Germany, for example, 76 percent of consumers used e-commerce, whereas these values reached 70 percent in Hungary and 30 percent in Albania. E-commerce revenue in Europe is expected to reach 902.3 billion U.S. dollars in 2027.

Amazon seems to be one of the drivers behind e-commerce in Europe… Amazon has a presence in some of Europe’s larger countries, such as France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, with its online store and its membership Amazon Prime. Amazon’s Europe division is headquartered in Luxembourg. Amazon EU S.à r.l. reached a revenue of roughly 51.3 billion euros in 2022.

… as well as language. Language also seems to play a part in online shopping behavior. Consumers from Austria, Belgium, and France had the most cross-border e-ecommerce purchases of European countries in 2022. Belgian consumers, for example, tended to visit the French and English domains from Amazon. As the web shop is not present in the country, Belgians visit the foreign domains or web stores in their language. Countries like Germany and Poland, both with a strongly developed domestic e-commerce market and in their own language, saw less cross-border purchases.

Sep 15, 2023 | Employment

Average weekly working hours in China August 2022-2023

In August 2023, surveyed employees of enterprises in China worked an average of 48.7 hours per week. During 2022, the average weekly working hours of surveyed people employed in Chinese enterprises amounted to around 47.5 hours on average.

Sep 19, 2023 | Wages & Salaries

Minimum hourly wage South Korea 2011-2023

In 2023, the minimum wage in South Korea stood at 9,620 South Korean won per hour. This was a slight increase compared to the previous year. The minimum wage was introduced by the South Korean government in 1988 after an increasing number of workers were paid low wages and this became a social issue.


Is raising the minimum wage beneficial?

President Moon Jae-in pledged to raise the minimum wage to at least 10,000 South Korean won by 2020; a controversial move that had been endorsed by scholars but criticized by both conservative and liberal political commentators across the country. The general public was also divided, with some arguing the consequential increase in the cost of living is a negative outcome of the wage increase. Opinion polls showed that only half of the population shared positive sentiments toward the general direction their country was going.

How are small and medium sized businesses affected?

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) had also been opposed to raising the minimum wage. Most business owners of this size stated that increasing revenue and maintaining profitability were major challenges for them, and this was intrinsically linked to the minimum wage they pay their employees. With the voices of employees and employers, especially those of medium and small businesses, were opposed, this conflict of opinions seemed to have intensified since the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020.

Sep 15, 2023 | Operating Systems

Share of mobile operating systems Indonesia 2019-2023

As of August 2023, Android held a share of nearly 89 percent of the mobile operating system market in Indonesia. Over the past decade, Google has kept its leading market position.

Mobile phone market in Indonesia

Indonesia booked as one of the fastest growth of the global top-ten smartphone markets worldwide. While ranked as the fourth-largest market in the world, Indonesia offers potential for growth because of a young population and increasing mobile internet penetration. Additionally, stabilization of the Indonesian rupiah against the U.S. dollar strengthened overseas vendor’s investment confidence in the country.

Major mobile phone brands

Smartphone giants Oppo, Samsung, and Xiaomi dominate the current market. Both Oppo and Samsung retain the largest market share at nearly 40 percent combined. While these brands continuously offer a diverse range of smartphone models with advanced technologies, the adoption of 5G devices lags behind 4G due to limited 5G connectivity in the country. This may lead to cautious approach on 5G investments, but it is expected that 5G phone adoption will slowly increase along with the infrastructure development.

Sep 21, 2023 | Soccer

Average attendance in the Premier League 2022-2023, by club

In 2022/23, Manchester United had the highest average attendance in the Premier League, drawing crowds of around 73,798 to each home game. Meanwhile, city rivals and Premier League champions Manchester City had an average attendance of 53,249.