Total Environmental Scan

Energy transition and the global economy

The global economy has suffered a significant slowdown amid prolonged trade disputes and wide-ranging policy uncertainties. While a slight uptick in economic activity is forecast for 2020, the World Economic Situation and Prospects 2020 warns that economic risks remain strongly tilted to the downside, aggravated by deepening political polarization and increasing scepticism over the benefits of multilateralism. These risks could inflict severe and long-lasting damage on development prospects. They also threaten to encourage a further rise in inward-looking policies, at a point when global cooperation is paramount.

Native American offenders accounted for a small portion of federal offenders (1.9%) in fiscal year 2020. The number of Native American offenders decreased from 1,562 offenders in fiscal year 2019 to 1,248 offenders in fiscal year 2020. 

How have U.S. workers handled disruptions from the coronavirus outbreak? And how have key measures like employee engagement and wellbeing fared? Jim Harter, Gallup's Chief Scientist on Workplace and Wellbeing, joins the podcast to break down Gallup's latest findings.

CDC’s National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) collects and reports annual mortality statistics using data from U.S. death certificates. This report presents an overview of provisional U.S. mortality data for 2020, including the first ranking of leading causes of death. In 2020, approximately 3,358,814 deaths occurred in the United States. From 2019 to 2020, the estimated age-adjusted death rate increased by 15.9%, from 715.2 to 828.7 deaths per 100,000 population. COVID-19 was reported as the underlying cause of death or a contributing cause of death for an estimated 377,883 (11.3%) of those deaths (91.5 deaths per 100,000).

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic affected drastically all forms of human mobility, including international migration. Around the globe, the closing of national borders and severe disruptions to international travel obliged hundreds of thousands of people to cancel or delay plans of moving abroad. Hundreds of thousands of migrants were stranded, unable to return to their countries, while others were forced to return to their home countries earlier than planned, when job opportunities dried up and schools closed.

2020 will likely be remembered as the year the workplace changed forever. From in-office safety measures to work-from-home conference calls, leaders have been forced to reimagine every aspect of their management culture.

What's essential to performance? How does personal life shape professional life? What do our core values really mean when the marketplace throws a curveball?

As leaders navigated 2020's tough questions, many made transformative discoveries and tapped into new performance potential. After 12 months of challenges, leaders can walk away with decades' worth of invaluable workplace lessons.

There is no telling yet if this surge of new telecommuting will break after the COVID-19 crisis subsides, or if it will build into a permanent new wave of remote government workers. What is likely though is that it will be difficult for some managers to quickly stuff the genie back in the bottle. They, as well as their workforces, will have experienced work-ready mornings sans commute along with other benefits that remote working offers. They will have overcome many of the difficulties and anxieties associated with telework and may have disproven any theories that work roles in their organization cannot be conducted outside the office. Necessity is the mother of invention as they say, and success is the best measure available.

The world continues to experience an unprecedented and sustained change in the age structure of the global population, driven by increasing levels of life expectancy and decreasing levels of fertility. People are living longer lives, and both the share and the number of older persons in the total population are growing rapidly. Globally, there were 727 million persons aged 65 years or over in 2020. Since women live longer than men, on average, they comprise the majority of older persons, especially at advanced ages. Over the next three decades, the number of older persons worldwide is projected to more than double, reaching over 1.5 billion in 2050. All regions will see an increase in the size of the older population between 2020 and 2050.

This report provides criminal justice policymakers and practitioners with a priority agenda to prepare the nation’s criminal justice system for future public health crises. Through its recommendations, the Commission seeks to better balance the roles and responsibilities of the public health and public safety fields.

About 600,000 Americans have died of COVID-19 since the coronavirus outbreak began. But behind that huge figure is a more nuanced one that brings the human toll of the virus into even sharper relief.

In addition to the overall number of deaths from a given cause, researchers can estimate the number of “life years” lost due to it – a statistic that takes life expectancy into account. For example, if a person with a life expectancy of 80 dies at age 50, they are estimated to have lost 30 years of life. Examining this statistic underscores the extent to which the virus has cut Americans’ lives short.

The COVID-19 pandemic is inflicting high and rising human costs worldwide, and the necessary protection measures are severely impacting economic activity. As a result of the pandemic, the global economy is projected to contract sharply by –3 percent in 2020, much worse than during the 2008–09 financial crisis. In a baseline scenario--which assumes that the pandemic fades in the second half of 2020 and containment efforts can be gradually unwound—the global economy is projected to grow by 5.8 percent in 2021 as economic activity normalizes, helped by policy support. The risks for even more severe outcomes, however, are substantial.