China faces a population halving within 45 years

<p>Kia ora,</p><p>Welcome to Friday's Economy Watch where we follow the economic events and trends that affect New Zealand.</p><p>I'm David Chaston and this is the International edition from Interest.co.nz.</p><p>Today we lead with news underestimates of China's birth rate will have very major long term impacts.</p><p>But first, <a href="https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/OPA/newsreleases/ui-claims/20211788.pdf" target="_blank"><strong>new US jobless claims</strong></a> came it just under 300,000 last week, similar to the prior week. A surge in California masked improvements elsewhere. There are now 2.46 mln people on these benefits and also similar to last week.</p><p>The closely-watched <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.chaptermanager.com/chapters/b742ccc3-ff70-8eca-4cf5-ab93a6c8ab97/files/mni-chicago-press-release-2021-09.pdf" target="_blank"><strong>Chicago PMI</strong></a> came in pretty much as expected in September with a very good expansion even if it was less than in July and August. The pace of new order intakes eased back a little, and the pressure of price increases did too.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.bea.gov/news/2021/gross-domestic-product-third-estimate-gdp-industry-and-corporate-profits-revised-2nd" target="_blank"><strong>US Q2 final GDP result</strong></a> has ended better than the second estimate, which in turn was better than the initial estimate. A <a href="https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/corporate-profits" target="_blank"><strong>surge in corporate profits</strong></a> was the main reason for the improvement. The US economy grew +6.7% (real) in Q2-2021 to have economic activity <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP" target="_blank"><strong>running at a record US$22.7 tln</strong></a> (nominal) pace per year.</p><p>China is now on a week-long holiday, starting with National Day today.</p><p>But their energy crisis isn't going away, and Beijing has blinked on its climate and trade policies, issuing orders for energy companies to do whatever necessary to secu