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New investment in clean energy technologies, companies, and projects held steady in the second quarter of 2010 at $33.9bn as a drop in investment in European projects was offset by a continuing boom in China and a bounce-back in the US, according to new estimates from research firm Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The quarterly total represented just a 1.5% slip from first quarter 2010, a 3.0% fall from Q2 2009, and came despite the Greek credit crisis, poorly performing public markets, and a sluggish U.S. economic recovery.

The unemployment rate for the OECD area fell slightly to 8.6% in May 2010 from 8.7% in April. The general pattern of broad stability continues across most OECD countries. But the June 2010 rates for Canada, at 7.9%, and the United States, at 9.5%, both fell by 0.2 percentage point from May.

International migration has fallen during the economic crisis, but as the recovery moves into gear migrants will once again be needed to fill labour and skill shortages, according to a new OECD report.

Alternative assets under management (AuM) on behalf of pension funds by the world’s largest alternative investment managers remained unchanged in 2009 compared to the year before at US$817 billion, according to research produced by global professional services company Towers Watson in conjunction with the Financial Times. The research also shows that around half of all assets managed by these alternative investment managers are managed on behalf of pension funds. The Global Alternatives Survey covers five alternatives asset classes: real estate; private equity fund of funds (PEFoF); fund of hedge funds (FoHF); infrastructure and commodities and includes rankings of the top managers in each area.

Institutional investment managers have moderated their expectations for global growth, according to a quarterly survey conducted by Northern Trust Global Advisors (NTGA), and more than two-thirds of those surveyed expect that sovereign debt concerns regarding Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain will weigh on global markets for the next six months or longer.

OECD composite leading indicators (CLIs) for May 2010 continue to point to an expansion but with stronger signals of a slowing pace of growth than in last month’s assessment. The CLI for the OECD area increased by 0.1 point in May 2010, the 10th consecutive monthly deceleration.

Real GDP in the OECD area grew by 0.6% in the first quarter of 2010 compared with the last quarter of 2009. Stockbuilding was the main contributor to OECD GDP growth for the third consecutive quarter.

OECD countries need to create 17 million jobs to get employment levels back to where they were before the crisis, according to the OECD’s Employment Outlook 2010 a new OECD report.

Corporates expect economic growth to resume over the next two years, but major fundraising plans are on hold as caution still reigns over corporate strategy, according to a survey of 440 senior financial and non-financial executives conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit and commissioned by RBC Capital Markets, the corporate and investment banking arm of Royal Bank of Canada.

OAG reports in the July 2010 edition of OAG FACTS that scheduled airline seat capacity within and to and from the Asia Pacific region has the highest growth this month and year-to-date. The number of seats within the region scheduled for July increased by 10% or 8.5 million, bringing the total to 93.5 million; seat capacity to and from increased by 9% or an additional 1.2 million to a total of 15.3 million seats.