Economic Update

I figured with President Obama making a visit to Russia this week that this may be a good time to update everyone in the US on the economic front over here. Unemployment is now at 9.9%, which is down from 10.2% and is the first decrease in over a year. It also appears as though some of the construction that was halted has started again. Wages in arrears, a concept that we in the US are not at all familiar with, increased by 10.8% in May to 8.78 billion rubles ($282 million). Overall, the state of the Russian economy is not much different from that in the US at this point. There is a glimmer of hope here since oil prices have been on the rise and the economy is mostly reliant on natural resources, but we'll see how that plays out over the next few months.

Below is a link that provides information on inflation, which I guess should make me happy since it has come down, although I'm not sure that a decrease from 14% to just over 11% is all that much to get excited about.

http://www.moscowtimes.ru/article/1009/42/379341.htm