this is bbc news. the headlines: israel says it's working with with egypt and qatar to secure the release of more hostages held in gaza as relatives stage a protest in tel aviv. the world health organization says it has delivered crucial medical supplies to gaza's al shifa hospital which has been working with a much reduced capacity following israel's military offensive. the british teenager alex batty, found in france after being missing for six years, has returned to the uk. luton town captain tom lockyer is "stable" after suffering a cardiac arrest on the pitch in a premier league match. i will be representing the uk at the eurovision song contest! pop star and actor olly alexander is to be the united kingdom's entry for next year's

eurovision song contest. now on bbc news, talking business. hello, everybody. a very warm welcome to talking business weekly with me, aaron heslehurst. let's go and take a look at what's on the show, what's in store for 202a? another year of struggle for the global economy. but are things about to get brighter? how much we spend in the shops, jobs and interest rates as well as elections and war are all on the agenda for the next 12 months. but what will it mean for our cost of living? i'm going to tackle those questions with these two, there they are, the chief economist atjp morgan, one of the world's biggest banks, who tells me why the us is still leading the way but europe is the big worry. and the boss of the world's biggest recruitment firm, randstad, is going to give me the lowdown on what might change in the world of work. plus, coming out of the clouds, the head of the global airline body, iata, tells me why

the cost of flying is one thing that won't be getting cheaper next year. wherever you'rejoining me from around the world, once again, a big hello and a warm welcome to the show. so as we wrap up 2023, we've decided to take a look at what's in store for all of us in 202a. what will change in our global economy? what about our jobs and paycheques? will we continue paying those high prices in supermarkets, or will the cost of living get easier? but before we start to take a look forward, let'sjust remind ourselves where we're at today. 2023 was a year of struggle for millions of us as the global economy continued recovering from the pandemic and, of course, remains blighted by war in ukraine. things are being felt very differently in the world's two biggest economies. the many differences between the us and china, including on trade, they continue to cast a shadow around the world. and whilst the us has, well, proven, resilient,

china, it struggled to emerge from those covid lockdowns. inflation. it's also been a big part of this year. in china, prices have started falling whilst in the us and europe, well, they continue to rise, although the pace of those increases has slowed. and because of rising inflation, 2023 was a year where our cost of borrowing, it skyrocketed. yeah, central banks, they increased interest rates to try and tame that inflation. and there are signs that's working, which means, for now, many of those banks have hit the pause button on rate rises. now, as a result of all of this, the imf, the international monetary fund, is expecting global growth to slow to 3% this year and slow again in 2024 to 2.9%, which they say puts it well below the historical average. the global economy is limping along, not sprinting. the news on inflation is encouraging, but we're not quite there yet.

the rate at which prices increase has an impact everywhere, from the prices that we pay at the supermarket to business investment to job creation and wages. so it is likely to remain a key focus for the bosses of the world's central banks. inflation has eased from its highs, and this has come without a significant increase in unemployment. that's very good news. but inflation is still too high. 0ngoing progress in bringing it down is not assured and the path forward is uncertain. as we look ahead to next year, i want to assure the american people that were fully committed to returning inflation to our 2% goal. 0urjob is to achieve the 2% inflation target sustainably. now we're making good progress. we've seen an unwinding of many of the shocks that we had, the big shocks that we had last year, particularly related to the war in ukraine and so on. but there is this persistent element to it, which we've got to take out. inflation is expected -

to decline gradually over the course of next year. before approaching our 2% target in 2025. 0ur mandate is not. to cause a recession. 0k. so to try and work out where that leaves us for the year ahead, i decided to catch up with the chief global economist at one of the world's biggest banks, new york—based jp morgan. bruce kasman, a real pleasure having you on the show. and bruce, let's start with this because your forecast expects growth in the global economy to slow over the next 12 months. and if we look, let's take germany as an example. one major economy, it's already seen a recession. so, bruce, do you think others will follow? i'm just wondering, which countries do you expect to do particularly well and which ones not so well? the way we're looking at the world right now is that there's a tension between the underlying resilience and health of the global economy, which should continue to propel things forward. and i want to emphasise there,

the united states and emerging markets all have really solid fundamentals. and if we can continue to move forward here, i think both regions are going to do particularly well. i think the tension here is that we still have persistent inflation. and while markets have become more optimistic that central bankers are going to be able to take their feet off their brake in 2024, we're somewhat sceptical of that. so while we continue to have reasonable growth in �*24 and perhaps sometime in the next 12—18 months, that might raise the vulnerability that actually does lead to a recession. and bruce, bear with me on this one, because perhaps the most pressing worry for millions of people watching this around the world is inflation. you know, prices, of course, continuing to rise faster than the 2% target set by most central banks. and over the last year or so, bruce, we have seen those central banks raising interest rates month after month to try

and bring down the inflation. and we often hear how it takes time for those rate hikes to have an impact. so i'm wondering, will 2024 be the year that we finally see those effects? i think the answer to that is no, but i think the central bank community doesn't need it to get all the way back to 2% before they can consider easing. so the hope of 2024 is that, well, you get an incomplete unwind of inflation, you get a substantial enough one, one that brings underlying inflation below 3%, but it's by no means for sure that it's going to happen. and that is in some basic sense, the key question about �*24. if central banks can take their feet off the brakes it will be much harder to keep things maintained.

and when it comes to consumerspending, bruce, what differences do you see in different parts of the world? because it continues to be pretty strong in the us, but less so in europe. could that be the difference between growth and recession? no doubt. so let's just look. since the pandemic, the us consumers have increased spending in real terms by 10%. the euro area consumer has increased spending zero, and the uk consumer has contracted by about i.5%. some of it is the us has had more fiscal transfers or more wealth gains. but a lot of it is that european consumers have been much more cautious. the hope is that inflation is coming down now. wage gains have remained elevated and the hope is that consumers will now start to begin picking up. we saw that in the third quarter gdp report for the euro area, but european consumers are clearly the weak link in the global economy as we've gone through the past year.

bruce, even more so than chinese consumers? even more so than chinese consumers who have been sluggish and chinese housing has been particularly weak and very choppy. i think it's fair to say that 2023 was a year in which pretty much every region of the world did reasonably well except for western europe. western europe is by far the weakest link and the biggest threat at this moment to the global expansion. well, let's turn our attention to the world's second biggest economy, china, of course, and the imf. it's repeatedly warned that it's a major drag on the global economy. and there are problems ranging from, well, the highly indebted property sector to youth unemployment to a fall in foreign investment. bruce, what do you think president xijinping's government can do to improve things? and importantly, how important is all of that to the rest of us? first i think we should understand that what is happening in china has probably a very significant effect

on its medium term growth prospects but the prospects for 2024 are not negative for china. china has benefited and continues to benefit from covid normalisation. china is still unwinding a very significant overhang in its housing and property markets, which plays notjust into construction but plays into financial stability issues. china has also seen private sector confidence significantly hurt by government policies on regulatory and otherfronts over the last few years. so as we look at china, we see over the next few quarters it growing probably 5% or more, which is not as strong as it did before the pandemic, but is by no means a near—term threat to the global economy. one important way that china is having an influence on the global economy right now is it has a lot of excess capacity in its industrial sector. it is exporting deflation and goods pricing to the rest of the world. that is a good thing for consumers.

it's a good thing for people who are worried about central banks, it take some pressure off of it, but it's not a good thing for those companies that compete with china in global trade. in 2024, we have lots of elections around the world including one in the united states, a major economy. donald trump has implanted the idea of a 10% tax of pretty much everything that comes into the country. that has led some to say it could lead to a global trade war, how important is the outcome of the us election to the global economy? i don't think the us election would have much impact on global outcomes, it will have an impact on what the fed does in policy, but the outcome is crucial in so many ways. the re—emergence of a trade war or would be significant,

less for the impact of tariffs or something significant on front but what we saw in 2018—19, was a dramatic fall off in business confidence as a potential applications of that conflict were starting to hit how people plan into the future. i think that problem could emerge again. there are a whole host of issues on regulatory front, tax front, and i think we need to think about institutional issues around the fed, which matters for how stable global financial markets are. well, on that point, bruce kasman, a real pleasure having you on the show. happy holidays. merry christmas. and we'll check in with you in the new year. 0k. thank you. so as one year changes to another, many of us, we start thinking about our careers. what do we want from ourjobs? more money? a better work life balance? well, in many countries, workers, they had the upper hand in 2023 as, well, companies, they struggled to find enough staff. more than two million people found a newjob thanks to the netherlands based randstad, which is the world's biggest recruitment firm.

so i caught up with the big boss about the outlook for the next 12 months. sander van't noordende, always great having you on the show. and sander, let's start with this because coming in to 2023, one of the, the big global challenges for companies was simply finding enough staff. has that improved or could that also be a problem in the coming year? i would say, aaron, that has improved somewhat, but not a lot. if you look at the unemployment figures in all our major markets, be it the us, be the main european markets, be it the main asian markets, unemployment numbers are still at a very low level. are there different trends that you're noticing in different parts of the world? i mean, for instance, the us economy, it's been pretty resilient. it continues to create jobs. but then you look at china, massive problems, economy that's struggling, huge youth unemployment. it's a very mixed global picture, isn't it? yeah, but i would say it's a historic pattern. it starts in the us, then it goes to europe, then it goes to asia pacific

and it feels like we are seeing some green shoots. i say green shoots in the us, so that should bode well for 2024, europe is probably six months behind that and apac another six months behind that. so the pattern is not unusual in that sense. in many countries we are seeing what can be described as the skills gap, the lack of right qualifications to fill the roles, at the time when global economy is stuttering, how damaging is that the economies? if you look at the job growth over the last ten years, i was just looking at numbers, it is primarily in the highest skilled jobs, meaning employers and companies such as grants ours that need to ensure we provide the skills to the people in the marketplace so they are

fit for the work out there. we've also just had the the cop 28 climate summit, of course, big business was there trying to tackle the climate change issue, but, sander, many companies just can't find the people with those sort of green skills. and i'm just wondering, how important are those green technology skills for the future and how quickly can we get those skills into the workforce? they are extremely important because everything around climate change, the energy transition, the food transition, the water transition, the broader resources transition is driving massive investments. and, you know, investments come with work and work needs to be done by people. so that's going to be the major drive in the world for new employment, i would say. and, sander, if we look at the global economy, inflation continues to be a big problem. so i have to ask you, to what measure is that affecting our wages? well, from inflation comes wage inflation. and actually wage inflation has come down over the past 12 months. for instance, wage inflation in the us, being a little bit

ahead of the game again, is now lower than than here in europe. so wage inflation is coming down, which i think by and large is good news because as inflation comes down, wage inflation comes down, things become more normal, more predictable, if you will. and given the cost of living crisis, it's still very much here. for millions of people around the world, is money the most important factor of a new job or, sander, are there other things that people are looking for in a job? so people are looking for the full package, i would say, aaron, people are looking for meaningful work. people are looking for belonging in the workplace. do i feel comfortable in the workplace? and last but not least, i would say these days people are looking for flexible work because flexibility and working from home is definitely a very serious criteria in people to pick a job. and sander, let's talk about al. artificial intelligence. it's already disrupting the world of work. one of the most high profile cases was in the us, where those screenwriters were on strike.

tthe worry of ai taking jobs, just one of many of the ai concerns. is that something, sander, that you see spreading to more and more industries? yes. so manyjobs will be affected by ai. roughly around 50% of the jobs is the world economic forum research tells us. but i would say, aaron, ai is by and large a good force for driving more productivity in a world where talent is increasingly scarce. so if more work can be done by technology and people can be supported more in their work by technology, the productivity will go up, which i think is a good thing, because then people can focus on the meaningful parts of their work, but also people can focus on working with people in health care, in other services industries. so i think by and large, ai is effective for good. do you think as ai spreads to other industries,

do you think in 2024 that we could see more industries being disrupted because the workers, they're either going on strike or they're just saying, "we're not having any of this ai stuff"? i'm not expecting that, to be honest, because ai, as with all technologies, takes time to implement. for instance, here in ranstadt, we use al to write job descriptions. now, that sounds easier than it is because we are such we have to have everything perfect in seven languages for alljobs. that takes time. and by the way, when we put the the initial pilots in the hands of our consultants, they love it because what used to take 20—25 minutes, it takes now 3—5 minutes. and they can spend more time with their talent and with their clients to talk about the more important thing. and sander, let me end on this. if you're going to offer one piece of advice to people who are both looking for a newjob and those who are hiring for a new role

in the new year, what would that little piece of advice be? my piece of advice to talent would be "make sure you get a job you will enjoy because then you will be more productive and you will enjoy life better". and my advice to people hiring would be, "make sure you hire talent that's going to enjoy your company and make sure you listen to talent because they're looking for something else than they were looking for last year and the year before". well, on that point, sander van't noordende, the big boss of randstad. a real pleasure, as always. merry christmas. happy holidays. and we'll talk to you soon. thank you very much. and aaron, happy holidays to all the viewers. so here's a question. how often have you been on a plane this year? well, it's likely that it was more often than last year. and in 2024, those numbers, they are set to grow again with a record, listen to this, 4.7 billion passengers expected to take to the skies. that's why it's an industry worth about 3.5% of the entire

global economy and supports more than three million jobs that forecast it was put together by iata. that's the international air transport association, which represents more than 300 airlines, accounting for more than 80% of the world's air traffic. and i've been catching up with its big boss. willie walsh, always a pleasure having you on the show. and let's start with this, willie, because there's not long of 2023 left and you're expecting the industry as a whole to make a profit and also expecting a bigger profit next year. i've got to ask you, willie, are the troubles in the losses of the pandemic firmly in the rear—view mirror? well, i think we've made great progress aaron. but i do have to sort of caution the outlook by pointing you to the net margin. you know, it's still wafer thin, 2.6% this year, 2.7% next year. so, you know, these are margins that most industries would consider completely unacceptable. so we do have more work to do, but definitely a strong

recovery and a very positive development. let me break those margins down, because you've said that on average, and i'm going to quote you here, "an airline will make a profit of $5.45 per passenger". but you said that's too little now. willie, some will say, "hey, it's still a profit", but surely it's, if you look at it, surely that's not enough for investing in the future. and, of course, the huge cost for the airline industry to go greener. it's not enough, we clearly have a massive challenge ahead of us transitioning to net—zero, which is going to cost a lot of money. so you can see what way this is going to go with wafer thin margins. anything that's impacts on the cost base will be felt through the ticket prices. so consumers are going to see higher ticket prices going forward. i want to talk to you about the airfares. look post—pandemic, you know, the airline fares have been substantially higher. and yes, travellers, they've been paying those higherfares.

but surely, willie, with inflation, the cost of living crisis for many, surely there's a limit to what people are prepared to pay? yeah, i think there is and it's clearly will impact on the rate at which the industry grows. but we do a lots of research looking at airfares come. to inflation because there's been quite a little focus on what happened in the airline industry. but if you go back to 2019 as the base year and look at fare development in 2023, we're reallyjust keeping pace with inflation, and in fact in most markets slightly below inflation. and when you consider that fuel for us is 3i%—32% of our cost base against the typical basket. when you're looking at consumer inflation of around 6%, you know, the inflation that we've faced, it's even been higher than that. so i think people sometimes forget that inflation impacts on everything, including airfares. while i've got you and viewers around the world will want

to know where our airfare is going to be in 2024? we'll see an additional fuel cost in 2024, about an extra ten billion. we're forecasting 281 billion usd for ourfuel bills. there are some other costs coming through, so our costs will increase. so you can expect, i think ticket prices will be largely flat next year versus this year. there may be some increases, but not, you won't see the the same rate of increase that we've witnessed in the last couple of years. and of course, willie, we've just had the cop 28 climate summit and as we know, aviation accounts for around 2.5% of global carbon emissions. and yet again, you're forecasting more people than ever will be flying next year. so it's a balancing act, isn't it, really? because if you've got something like 4.7 billion people flying next year, that's great for the global economy. but others will then want to askjust how quickly can aviation reduce its climate footprint? for us, it's an

existential challenge. we have to address this. we have committed to achieving net—zero in 2050. there are not many short term options available to us. principally will revolve around the use of greater levels of sustainable aviation fuel in the short to medium term. that's very expensive. so you can see, even with the margins that we're making, very, very small margins, the industry continues to invest in sustainability. around 20 to 30% of global trade goes by plan, food etc, but you are expecting a fall in terms of how much cash that side of the business brings in. i'm wondering what kind of challenges it poses to airline finances?

it was a lifeline during the pandemic. to finances, typically cargo is about i3—i4% of the industry's finance base, it was higher about 40%, but now reverting back to that. as i said, we had a very destructive and distorted market for a few years, and are heading back to what i would describe as a more normal environment. it will be important for airlines, and they will continue to focus on cargo, but most of the emphasis on the major passenger airlines will be on passenger fares. and, willie, your latest polling shows that something like 82% of passengers are now travelling as much or if not more than they did before the pandemic. but you also say that supply chain problems, they're a big factor to to limiting growth. why are airlines having a hard time getting well, getting new planes into service, for example? yeah, it was a lot of disruption, notjust in the airline supply chain or the aircraft supply chain through the period

of the pandemic. but it's taken much longer to see that recover. and then combined with that, we have new problems with engine manufacturers. so the pratt whitney gear turbofan will require some major overhaul work. that's going to take a lot of supply out of the market in �*24 and �*25. so it's a very delicately balanced supply chain that we've had, heavily disrupted by the pandemic and taking a lot longer to recover than any of us would have wanted to see. and willie, let me end on this. i've got to ask you. i mean, just how confident are you that your forecast for 2024 will come to fruition? i'm very confident. you know, traditionally, us at iata, we tend to be conservative when we put these forecasts together. and typically, we'll you know, we look great as we go through the year. i think this is going to be one of the most exciting periods in the history of this industry. and if i was still running an airline, i'd be very

optimistic about the outlook for 2024. well, on that point, willie walsh, the big boss of iata, always appreciate your time. a pleasure seeing you. merry christmas. happy holidays, and i'll talk to you in the new year. merry christmas, aaron. thank you. well, that's it for this week's show. i hope you enjoyed it. don't forget, you can keep up with the latest on the global economy on the bbc news website and the smartphone app. of course, you can also follow me on by me i'll you back. merry christmas. happy holidays. i'll see you soon. bye bye. hello there. part two of the weekend looks pretty similar to saturday's with a lot of cloud around for many, glimmers of brightness here and there, and it remaining pretty mild for mid—december. there will be some very wet weather, though, continuing across the north and west of scotland, thanks to almost stationary weather front here. but you can see on the air mass charts, the mild air moving up on a brisk south—westerly wind. however, this weather front

will continue to bring some problems across northwest scotland, some heavy rainfall. it does start to weaken a little bit as it sinks southwards into more central parts of the country for sunday evening. but we're concerned about the northwest highlands. by the end of sunday, we could be looking at up to 200 millimetres of rain falling in places. that's likely to lead some localised flooding and even some landslips in some sensitive areas. so the amber warning the met office have enforced throughout sunday continues for the north and west highlands. the rain beginning to edge a bit further southwards into argyll, towards the end of the day pushes into dumfries and galloway, northern ireland, into the evening, probably across cumbria and northwest wales. elsewhere it's rather cloudy, glimmers of brightness, southeast england, east of the pennines, east wales, and that'lljust make it feel even more mild, with temperatures at the low to mid—teens for many. that weather front begins to weaken as it moves southwards during sunday night. but it starts to reinvigorate across wales, south west england by the end of the night, and it turns a bit colder for the very far north of scotland. otherwise, it's a largely mild night to come for most 8—ii degrees. for monday, we have a couple

of weather fronts across the country. these will reinvigorate as they move their way eastward. so it starts off again, rather cloudy for many, limited brightness. the rain peps up across northern ireland, central southern scotland, northern england, the midlands, wales for a time and then pushes out into the north sea, leaves the legacy of cloud, further spots of rain and drizzle. and once again, for the time of year it'll be fairly mild, temperatures low to mid—teens. as we move out to monday to tuesday, this more active weather front will bring some wet weather for england and wales throughout the day on tuesday. turns briefly colder across the far north of the country, you can see there. but generally we're in the influence of low pressure. so next week will remain fairly unsettled. rain at times, generally mild for most of us, but it will start to see a little bit colder, particularly towards the end of the week across northern areas. and you can see that evidence here for the end of the week. but generally speaking, generally mild for mid to late december with outbreaks of rain, a little bit of brightness here and there.

good morning. welcome to breakfast, with rogerjohnson and rachel burden. 0ur headlines today: after years of denials, the former conservative peer baroness mone has admitted she could benefit from millions of pounds of profit from ppe sold to the government during the pandemic. i wasn't trying to pull the wool over anyone�*s eyes, and i regret and i'm sorry for not saying straight out, yes, iam involved. a british teenager who was found in france after going missing for six years has arrived back in the uk. in sport, tom lockyer is stable after suffering a cardiac arrest during luton�*s match at bournemouth. the game was later abandoned.

and good