Торги на міжбанківському валютному ринку завершуються на рівні 26 гривень 9,5–11,5 копійки за долар
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The U.S. economy created 531,000 jobs in October, more than the 450,000 economists had forecast, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

The unemployment rate also dropped slightly from 4.8% to 4.6%, the lowest since the pandemic hit. The unemployment rate in February of 2020 was 3.5%, an historic low.

Jobs numbers for August and September were also revised upward.

Celebrating the better-than-expected report, President Joe Biden called it “another great day for our economic recovery,” during comments Friday at the White House on the jobs report. 

Most of the employment gains were in the leisure and hospitality, professional and business services, manufacturing, and transportation and warehousing sectors.

“Overall, it was a really positive jobs report but leaves some questions about the structure of the labor market for the Fed,” Megan Greene, the global chief economist at the advisory firm Kroll Institute and a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, told ABC News.

However, the jobs report was not all good news.

Labor participation, the number of people working or actively seeking a job, remained at a low 61.6%, and only 104,000 new people joined the workforce in October.

The disappointing labor participation rate has been fairly steady over the past year at the lowest levels seen since the early 1970s.

Businesses have tried to get workers back by raising wages or offering bonuses, but most of those gains have been offset by rising prices for food, gas and rent. 
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Загалом за підсумками жовтня 2021 року обсяги чистої купівлі валюти Національним банком на міжбанківському валютному ринку становили 702,6 млн дол
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The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has reported its Food Price Index, which tracks the international prices of a basket of food, found that in October, the cost of a basket of food was up 3% from September.

The FAO Cereal Price Index increased 3.2% in October from the previous month, while the price of wheat rose by 5% amid reduced harvests from major exporters of wheat that include Canada, Russia and the United States. The FAO also recorded the international prices of other major cereals have increased.

Meanwhile, the U.N. agency said the price of vegetable oil hit an “all-time high” increase of 9.6% in October, marking a fourth consecutive month of price hikes. The FAO said the rising vegetable oil price was “largely underpinned by persisting concerns over subdued output in Malaysia due to ongoing migrant labor shortages.”

Dairy prices rose by 2.5%, while the price of meat fell by 0.7%, “marking the third monthly decline.”

Some information from The Associated Press and Reuters was used in this report.
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Congressional Democrats this week proposed an addition to U.S. President Joe Biden’s climate and social spending legislation that would allow Medicare, the federal government’s health care program for older Americans, to negotiate with drugmakers over the cost of certain prescription medications.

U.S. consumers pay higher prices for prescription medications than almost any of their peers in the developed world, a fact that generations of politicians and advocates have struggled in vain to change. If passed, the proposal working its way through Congress would make a dent, though a relatively small one, in that long-standing problem.

The plan being discussed would give Medicare officials the ability to negotiate pricing on a sliver of the thousands of prescription medications on the market in the United States, beginning with about 10 drugs and capped at 20. Liberal members of Congress at first had hoped to grant Medicare authority to negotiate the prices of up to 250 costly drugs every year.

Though small, the number of drugs that would be covered by the proposal represents a disproportionate amount of the annual “spend” on drugs by Medicare patients.

A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation released this year determined that the 10 top-selling drugs covered under Medicare Part D accounted for 16% of net total spending in 2019. The top 50 drugs — representing just 8.5% of all drugs covered under the program — accounted for 80% of spending.

The top 10 drugs, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation include “three cancer medications, four diabetes medications, two anticoagulants and one rheumatoid arthritis treatment.”

Confusing system 

Unlike many countries outside the U.S., where the government is able to negotiate drug prices and bring down the cost for a single national health care system, the landscape in the U.S. is highly fragmented. Most Americans with health insurance are covered by policies issued by for-profit companies in the private sector.

Americans 65 years and older are eligible for Medicare, which takes the place of a private insurer, but with some critical differences. For many years, Medicare did not offer prescription drug coverage, forcing Medicare patients to pay for medications out of pocket or seek third-party insurance coverage for their medications.

In 2003, Congress created Medicare Part D, under which private insurers offered medication coverage that met minimum requirements established by the federal government. While that program reduced costs for many seniors, cost-sharing provisions and design flaws mean that many recipients continue to face financially crippling bills for medication. A key reason is that each insurance provider must negotiate prices with drug companies individually, rather than using the bargaining power of the entire Medicare population to insist on lower costs.

‘Subsidizing R&D for the world’ 

For years, advocates for change have pointed out that drug companies set prices in the U.S. far above those in other countries in which they sell the same drugs. A study by the Rand Corporation this year comparing the U.S. with 32 other countries found that drugs cost on average 256% more in the U.S.

“American consumers are subsidizing the R&D for the world,” said Lovisa Gustafsson, vice president of the Controlling Health Care Costs program at the Commonwealth Fund, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

Compounding the problem is that Americans also shoulder a much greater share of the cost for their prescription medications.

“Patients in the U.S. face far higher cost-sharing than in a lot of other countries. So, just because they have insurance doesn’t mean that patients can actually afford the drugs that they need currently,” Gustafsson said. “There’s survey after survey showing that 20% to 25% of Americans can’t afford the drugs they’re prescribed by their physician, or split pills, or don’t get the prescription filled, because they just can’t afford it. And that’s even when they have insurance.”

Putting a lid on costs

An important element of the proposal before Congress is that it would place an annual cap of $2,000 on the co-payments that Medicare patients can be charged for their medications.

The prospect of a cap on out-of-pocket costs was well-received by many calling for reforms, such as AARP, a large advocacy group for older Americans.

“There’s no greater issue affecting the pocketbooks of seniors on Medicare than the ever-increasing costs of prescription drugs,” AARP CEO Jo Ann Jenkins said in a statement. “For decades, seniors have been at the mercy of Big Pharma. Allowing Medicare to finally negotiate drug prices is a big win for seniors. Preventing prices from rising faster than inflation and adding a hard out-of-pocket cap to Part D will provide real relief for seniors with the highest drug costs.”

Drug firms unhappy

PhRMA, a powerful trade group representing the pharmaceuticals industry, reacted unhappily to news of the proposal.

“If passed, it will upend the same innovative ecosystem that brought us lifesaving vaccines and therapies to combat COVID-19,” PhRMA President and CEO Stephen J. Ubl said in a statement. “Under the guise of ‘negotiation,’ it gives the government the power to dictate how much a medicine is worth and leaves many patients facing a future with less access to medicines and fewer new treatments.”

“While we’re pleased to see changes to Medicare that cap what seniors pay out of pocket for prescription drugs, the proposal lets insurers and middlemen like pharmacy benefit managers off the hook when it comes to lowering costs for patients at the pharmacy counter,” Ubl continued. “It threatens innovation and makes a broken health care system even worse.”

Industry claims exaggerated?

Numerous supporters of allowing the government to negotiate on drug prices claim that the industry’s insistence that it will stymie innovation is exaggerated.

One piece of evidence they point to is a study released by the Congressional Budget Office in August. The CBO created a model in which pharmaceutical companies were faced with the following scenario: A policy is put in place that reduces the return on their most profitable drugs by 15% to 25%.

The agency estimated that the impact would be a reduction of the number of new drugs coming onto the market by only one-half of 1% over the first 10 years of the new policy. That would increase to as much as an 8% reduction in the first three decades of the program.
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An Earth-flight giant contributes to NASA’s upcoming moon missions. Plus, words from the next crew to visit the International Space Station and grim news from NASA about the future of food on Earth. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us the Week in Space.
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Britain could revive domestic production of super strong magnets used in electric vehicles and wind turbines with government support, to cut its reliance on China and achieve vital cuts in carbon emissions, two sources with direct knowledge said. 

A government-funded feasibility study is due to be published on Friday, laying out the steps Britain must take to restart output of rare earth permanent magnets, the sources said. 

A magnet factory would help Britain, hosting the COP26 U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, meet its goal of banning petrol and diesel cars by 2030 and slashing carbon emissions to net zero by 2050. 

British production of the magnets vanished in the 1990s when the industry found it could not compete with China. But with the huge growth in demand, the government is keen to secure enough supply. 

Last month, the government set out plans to achieve its net zero strategy, which includes spending $1.15 billion to support the roll out of electric vehicles (EVs) and their supply chains. 

The study outlines how a plant could be built by 2024 and eventually produce enough of the powerful magnets to supply 1 million EVs a year, the sources who have read the report said. 

“We’re looking to turn the tide of shipping all this kind of manufacturing to the Far East and resurrect U.K. manufacturing excellence,” one of the sources said. 

The government’s Department for Business declined to comment on details regarding a possible magnet factory because the report has not been released. 

“The government continues to work with investors through our Automotive Transformation Fund (ATF) to progress plans to build a globally competitive electric vehicle supply chain in the U.K.,” a spokesperson said in an email. 

EV ramp up 

British rare earth company Less Common Metals put together the feasibility study and is considering seeking partners to jointly build the factory, the sources said. 

LCM is one of the only companies outside of China that transforms rare earth raw materials into the special compounds needed to produce permanent magnets. 

Automakers will need the magnets as they ramp up EV output in Britain. Ford said last month it would invest up to $310 million in an English plant to produce around 250,000 EV power units a year from mid-2024. 

Rare earth magnets made of neodymium are used in 90% of EV motors because they are widely seen as the most efficient way to power them. 

Electric cars with these magnets require less battery power than those with ordinary magnets, so vehicles can travel longer distances before recharging. 

A race by automakers to ramp up EVs and countries to switch to wind energy is due to boost demand for permanent magnets in Europe as much as tenfold by 2050, according to the European Union. 

The sources said government support would be vital so Britain could compete with China, which produces 90% of supply. 

The strategy mirrors similar efforts by the EU and the United States to create domestic industries of raw materials, rare earth processing and permanent magnets. 

 
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New claims for jobless benefits in the U.S. dropped to a new pandemic low, the Labor Department reported Thursday, as the world’s biggest economy continues its recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

A total of 269,000 out-of-work employees filed for unemployment compensation for the week ending October 30, down 14,000 from the week before, the agency said. The figure was the lowest total since mid-March 2020 when the pandemic first struck the U.S. economy, although still higher than the pre-coronavirus weekly average of 218,000 in 2019.

Since exceeding 900,000 in early January, weekly applications have generally declined as the job market recovers. During the last week of October, 2.1 million people in the U.S. received unemployment compensation, far lower than the 7.1 million in 2020 when the economy was suffering the worst effects of the pandemic.

In March and April of 2020, employers cut more 22 million jobs amid government-ordered lockdowns and consumers and employees staying home to avoid infection. Some 17 million of those jobs have returned. 

Government financial relief and vaccine rollouts led to more consumer spending and business re-openings, forcing companies to struggle to meet demand by re-hiring workers, particularly for low-wage jobs. 

The Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for federal government contractors and business with at least 100 employees could exacerbate worker shortages.

The unemployment report for October is due to be released on Friday.

Some information in this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters.
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Торги на міжбанківському валютному ринку завершуються на рівні 26 гривень 17–19 копійок за долар
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U.S. Republicans won big Tuesday in at least one off-year state election. As VOA’s Carolyn Presutti reports, some see Democrats’ losses in the state of Virginia as a warning sign for the party ahead of next year’s midterm elections, when all seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and a third of the U.S. Senate will be up for grabs.
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Банк очікує, що зростанню сприятиме великий врожай зернових, але вбачає ризики в повільних темпах реформ та вакцинації від COVID-19
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Законопроєкт передбачає створення двох нових бюджетних програм для закупівель кисневих станцій опорними «ковідними» лікарнями
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