AI to drive up UK youth unemployment, as Alphabet raises $80bn for spending splurge – business live

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news Anthropic confidentially files for initial public offering on US stock market Inflation across the eurozone has risen to its highest level since September 2023, adding to the pressure on the European Central Bank to lift interest rates. Eurozone consumer price inflation hit 3.2% in May, a new estimate from statistics body Eurostat shows, up from 3% in April. Eurozone inflation rose to 3.2% in May as pressure builds on the European Central Bank to act now to combat rising prices. Despite efforts to control it, underlying price pressures remain strong, with service inflation and wage growth persisting, businesses passing on costs, and global instability driving up energy and transport costs. These factors further strain supply chains across Europe. With this uptick in inflation, the ECB is increasingly likely to raise interest rates by 0.25 percentage points next week. This marks a shift from earlier expectations that the ECB might ease policy later this year to reignite the sluggish Eurozone economy. “Continued resilience in mortgage lending and housing market activity in April suggests the economic fallout from conflict in the Middle East has not yet hit household borrowing as hard as some feared. Mortgage approvals rose to a 15-month high of 65,945 in April, up from March’s 63,979, while gross mortgage lending, was the second-highest level since March 2025. “Household borrowing is proving surprisingly resilient in the face of geopolitical uncertainty, higher inflation risks and tighter financial conditions. The housing market is far from booming, but it is holding up better than the wider economic backdrop might suggest. Continue reading...