Analysis from the live market
About the desk
The Market Desk is written by the team behind BabZituna, a job app for candidates and small employers in the United Kingdom and France. It is written for them: the reader is someone deciding whether to apply, whom to hire, or what a number in the news actually says.
When BabZituna’s own listings can carry a question, the desk writes from them and links to the live page any reader can open. When they cannot, it writes from primary statistics: the ILO, national statistical offices, the World Bank. Every figure names its source and the date it was read.
One survey per economy, in that economy’s latest year, never mixed. Every denominator is named, and an unclassified category is never counted as a match. Economies that leave more than five per cent unclassified are excluded, and the exclusions are counted. Correlations are computed over the whole set, against the log of income per person, and reported with their sign.
Every piece ends with what its finding means for the people it is about, and says plainly what its figures do not show. The desk would rather print a smaller claim than a larger one it cannot tie to a document.
How an edition is built
Since 22 September 2026, every edition opens with its finding in one sentence and a chart of it, before any figure in the text. It ends with what the finding means for someone hiring and for someone applying, then gives its method, what it establishes and what it does not, and its sources in full. The read time is counted from the words, not estimated. Each edition appears in sixteen languages, each written in its own words.
How to cite
Every section heading carries a permanent link, the § sign. Cite the section, the edition’s title and its date. The desk keeps every edition at its original address.