If one looks at the official rate of unemployment it has only recently started to decline.
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The official rate is just under 10%, which is the rate that the bondholders get.
Dollars have been trading at four times the official rate on the black market.
Last October, according to foreign diplomats, a euro bought 1, 030 won at the semi-official rate.
The town's mayor, Alii Karabalin, admits that unemployment in Temirtau is above the official rate of 1.5%.
Affiliated retailers bought at the official price from affiliated wholesalers, who in turn bought at the official rate from manufacturers.
Now, all foreign currencies must be changed at commercial banks at the official rate, barely a third of the black-market rate.
Zimbabwe's official rate of inflation is 231 million percent, the world's highest.
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Last month, Bank of Ireland was criticised for increasing the interest rate on its Base Rate Tracker mortgages, despite the official rate remaining at 0.5%.
Since Zimbabwe's inflation is a tad higher than America's, nobody wishes to surrender hard currency at the official rate of 55 Zimbabwe dollars to one American dollar.
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Some argue that the official rate is high enough, but that ignores discouraged workers, or those not consistently looking, or those working work part-time but want full-time jobs.
So, actually, when you take into account the cost of living, the Asian-American poverty rate is about two and a half percentage points higher than the official rate.
On February 9th, it told the country's banks to start selling all their hard-currency inflows to the central bank and the state petrol-importing monopoly, at the official rate.
Yet in mad Minsk the central bank stood by an official rate of 33, 460 roubles to the dollar, and currency kiosks were obediently posting a rate of 42, 000.
Only by resorting to the black market, where the ruble usually traded at values 5-6 times less than its official rate, could people freely get access to hard currency.
The official rate settled at about six kyat to the dollar, but many businesses continued operating at unofficial rates that in recent years have been closer to 800 kyat to the dollar.
On Thursday, Iran's central bank devalued the rial by 8% against the dollar and ordered all currency-exchange shops to adhere to the official rate or be shut down, according to Iran's official media.
While the official rate for one liter of kerosene is 11.5 rupees, or 28 cents, on the black market it can sell for as much as 90 rupees, or more than two dollars.
Those whose products are bulky and hard to smuggle (tobacco farmers, for instance) must surrender half of their hard-currency proceeds to the government, which repays them in crisp new Zimbabwe dollars, at the official rate.
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This action targets those people that have been using credit cards as a way to purchase at the official rate rather than the black market rate, in effect creating a dual credit card exchange regime.
But that official rate does not take into account cost of living and when you factor in the fact that it costs more to live in San Francisco than in Topeka, Kansas, for example, then you see that those rates are considerably higher.
Apart from adding to the woes of those already in debt, many people will have noticed that the "official rate" of interest charged by the Revenue on unpaid tax is currently around 7.5% for the first thirty days with a surcharge of a further 5% thereafter.
Were donor agencies fully to comply with this requirement and transact their aid at the official rate, around 90% of the value of their aid would be captured by the central bank, which would be purchasing the aid dollars at around a tenth of their value.
Bankers and officials familiar with the move have said in recent weeks that the kyat will likely be set between 800 kyat and 820 kyat to the dollar, which is close to the prevailing unofficial street rate and far from the official rate of around six kyat.
The government publishes a separate unemployment rate, called the U-6, which adds to the official unemployment rate people who became discouraged and quit looking and those otherwise marginally attached to the labor force, such as working part time when a full-time job is preferred.
How can you give the banks a three-point spread when Japan's official discount rate is 0.5%?
That is 10.6 million more Americans than are counted by the official unemployment rate.
The official unemployment rate is back over 9%, with 25 million who lack full time work.
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The official poverty rate rose slightly, from 12.5% to 13.2%, bringing the total to 39.8m people.
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