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Training session curriculums and schedules have been announced for Analytics Summit 2019 presented by the University of Cincinnati Center for Business Analytics. The 8th annual event is being held April 1-3, 2019 at the Sharonville Convention Center in Cincinnati, Ohio.

All training sessions will be held April 1 and 2 from 8:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. (EST), with the exception of the Analytics for Executives session being held April 2nd from noon until 5 p.m. Hands-on, practical training techniques will give students the opportunity to interact directly with expert instructors and peers, and get immediate feedback along with answers to technical and business-related questions.

Sessions summaries follow. Prospective students are encouraged to visit the event website for a complete session outline, prerequisites, and details.

Advanced MS Power BI – This course takes a deep dive into advanced level Power BI skills, covering lesser-known but more advanced skills from the Power BI set of features. The session will be led by Geoff Marsh, BI Practice Leader from Amend Consulting, and Derek Sasthav, Project Leader at Amend.

Machine Learning with R – Learn the fundamentals and application of modern machine learning tasks. This course will cover unsupervised techniques to discover the hidden structure of datasets along with supervised techniques for predicting categorical and numeric responses via classification and regression. Session instructors will be Brad Boehmke, Director of Data Science at 84.51o, and Brandon Greenwell, Senior Data Scientist at Ascend Innovations.

Advanced Tableau Training – This two-day workshop on Tableau will cover intermediate and advanced topics. Attendees should have attended previous “Introduction to Tableau” training or have significant experience using Tableau in a professional environment. Course content will include advanced chart types and business dashboards, advanced calculations in Tableau, using calculations, parameters, and table calculations, and other topics. Jeff Shaffer, Tableau Zen Master, will lead this session.

Big Data with Hadoop & Spark – Attendees will learn how these powerful tools function and form the core of big data analytics systems. The emphasis of this course will be on understanding the fundamental principles of big data systems using Hadoop and Spark and will extend beyond basics to introduce some technical components. Andrew Harrison, Assistant Professor of Information Systems at the Lindner School of Business at UC, and Zhe (Jay) Shan, Assistant Professor in Dept. Information Systems and Analytics at Miami University Farmer School of Business will lead this session.

Analytics for Executives – This half-day session led by Glenn Wegryn, Executive Director at the UC Center for Business Analytics is intended for business leaders at the Director level and above. It will focus on providing a fundamental understanding of what analytics is, examples of successful applications in financial and other industries, how to get started, and what resources, skill sets, organization, and cultural elements need to be in place for long-term success.

Complete details and registration information can be found on the Analytics Summit 2019 event registration site.

About the University of Cincinnati’s Center for Business Analytics

The Center for Business Analytics at the University of Cincinnati’s Carl H. Lindner College of Business is a corporate-academic partnership that brings together a multidisciplinary group of businesses, organizations, faculty, and students to provide education and an exchange of ideas and best practices regarding the application of data-driven analytical methods for enhancing organizational performance.

In collaboration with its corporate sponsors, the center provides symposia, student projects, community training, and applied research focused on the use of techniques such as data visualization, data mining, predictive modeling, simulation, and optimization to solve important problems faced by businesses, government and non-profit organizations.

Tableau Software (NYSE: DATA), the leading analytics platform, today announced the general availability of Ask Data, which leverages the power of natural language processing to enable people to ask data questions in plain language and instantly get a visual response right in Tableau. This patent pending capability makes it easier for anyone, regardless of skill set, to engage deeply with data and produce analytical insights they can share with others without having to do any setup or programming. Ask Data is available at no extra charge as part Tableau’s newest release, Tableau 2019.1, which also launched today. For more information visit https://www.tableau.com/products/new-features.

In the same way Tableau first pioneered drag-and-drop functionality within analytics, Ask Data is the next stage in the evolution of self-service analytics. With Ask Data, customers can simply type a question such as, “What were my sales this month?” and Tableau will return an interactive data visualization that they can continue to explore, refine the question, and drill into further detail. There is no need to have a deep understanding of the data structure or programming skills. Whether they are a product manager, a manufacturing supervisor, a doctor, or a pizza shop owner, Ask Data enables anyone to have a conversation with their data. It uses sophisticated algorithms that are driven by an understanding of the person’s intent, not keywords, which helps Tableau return more relevant results. Because Ask Data is fully integrated into Tableau, people can then seamlessly and gracefully explore their data using Tableau’s full analytics capabilities.

“Now more than ever we need to connect our teams with self-service analytics that enable faster business insights. After a positive experience testing Ask Data with Tableau Online, we look forward to how this and other natural language models could support a wide spectrum of our analytics scenarios,” said Technical Account Manager, Scott Webber, from Expedia Group. “For example, sales managers could analyze performance by region around the globe simply by asking questions. Ask Data also supports our augmented analytics strategy, allowing non-technical users to automate data analysis and insights.”

Ask Data is available at no additional cost as part of Tableau Server and Tableau Online. Ask Data works with Tableau’s full range of supported data sources – both live and extract – allowing instant connection to any data source, without having to move the data or train the algorithm. And with no setup required, Ask Data integrates with Tableau Server’s existing security and governance capabilities, which makes it ready to use.

“With Ask Data, we’re helping make analytics ubiquitous by enabling anyone, regardless of expertise, to analyze data,” said Francois Ajenstat, Chief Product Officer at Tableau. “Our unique, conversational approach to natural language allows people to ask questions how they naturally think. Ask Data provides a more intuitive and natural way to interact with data, lowering the barrier to entry for analytics and allowing people to ask questions in plain language and get highly relevant insights faster.”

Patent Pending Technology Translates Simple Questions into Analytical Queries
Behind the scenes, Ask Data uses powerful algorithms to automatically profile and index data sources. Ask Data knows, for example, when someone types “American furniture” with their sales data, they need “Product Category” filtered to “Furniture,” and “Country” set to “United States.” It combines statistical knowledge about a data source with contextual knowledge about real-world concepts: “Furniture” is a common value for the “Product Category” field and “America” is a synonym of the country “United States.” This inherent support for synonyms allows people to generate insights while using different terms to represent the same field, such as “sales” and “bookings.”

Additionally, Ask Data’s innovative parser automatically cuts through ambiguous language and uses Tableau’s analytical depth to make it easy for people to ask sophisticated questions in a natural, colloquial way. This means, if a question could be interpreted multiple ways, Ask Data will combine knowledge about the data source with past user activity and present a number of valid options to choose from, with the ability to refine the results if needed. Fully integrated in the Tableau platform, Ask Data leverages Tableau’s patented Show Me technology and pioneering visual best practices to automatically represent the data in the best way possible.

Tableau 2019.1 Also Includes New Features like New Mobile App, Google Ad Connector and PowerPoint Export
In this first release of 2019, Tableau is also delivering new mobile capabilities and a completely redesigned mobile app for both iOS and Android. Automatic Mobile Layouts mean new dashboards will not only work great on phones, but will do so with the simple click of a button. With the new mobile app available in the next few weeks, customers can access their Tableau Server and Tableau Online vizzes wherever they are, whenever they need it, including interactivity when they are offline. The mobile app will also enable organizations to leverage existing Tableau security and governance features while scaling their analytics deployment.

Tableau 2019.1 also includes a Google Ads connector, which will help marketers analyze their website data more easily and blend it with other data sources across their organization. This connector adds to the more than 65 native connectors available today like Google BigQuery, Salesforce, Amazon Redshift, Snowflake and SAP Hana. And with the new Export to PowerPoint feature that optimizes visualizations and dashboards for slides, customers can present their analysis with the click of a button.

Also launching alongside Tableau 2019.1 is Tableau Data Management. The new subscription offering includes Tableau Prep Conductor to help customers better manage their data to ensure that trusted and timely data is being used to drive decisions across their organizations. Tableau will also expand the power of this offering with new native catalog capabilities coming later this year. Customers can add these capabilities to their existing environment by upgrading to Tableau Server 2019.1 and subscribing to the Tableau Data Management package. For more information, visit here.

About Tableau
Tableau (NYSE: DATA) helps people see and understand data. Tableau pioneered self-service analytics with the leading analytics platform that empowers people of any skill level to work with data. From individuals and non-profits to government agencies and the Fortune 500, more than 86,000 customer accounts around the world use Tableau to get rapid insights and make impactful, data-driven decisions. See how Tableau can help you by downloading the free trial at www.tableau.com/trial.

In a new report titled: The productivity agenda – moving beyond cost reduction in financial services, PwC sets out the important challenges and opportunities facing the financial services industry and the ways in which senior executives should respond if they wish to move beyond simple cost cutting and improve profitability in the long term.

With banks struggling to improve their return on capital, many institutions are being forced to restructure and cut costs. Even in the asset management industry, where ROE is higher than the financial services industry as a whole, there is downward pressure on margins and profitability. Cost cutting will only deliver so much. If financial institutions are to improve profitability in the long term they need to fundamentally improve the productivity of the enterprise.

John Garvey, Global Financial Services Leader for PwC stated that:

“The cost cutting agenda adopted by many institutions since the financial crisis has, in essence, de-globalised the industry to make it more local or national, shrunk global footprints, divested businesses, and shed clients. However, this process has run its course. If profitability is to get anywhere near the highs of fifteen years ago, what’s needed now is a fundamental focus on building a sustainable productive business model that can compete with both incumbent institutions and digital-only competitors.”

Based on a detailed survey of the global financial services industry, PwC has identified six areas where financial institutions can focus their productivity efforts to boost long term sustainable profitability:

1: Better understanding the workforce
Our experience indicates that by simply tracking hours by task, organisations can improve productivity by 15% to 20%, and the implementation of service catalogues and multi-tier sourcing can bring another 20% improvement.Of the organisations that didn’t track work by hours and tasks, 62% believed such tracking would yield productivity benefits.

2: Rethinking change functions
Forty per cent of financial institutions are spending 20% of their entire budget on so-called ‘change-the-institution’ efforts. However only 15% said they were satisfied with their ability to execute change.

3: Embracing the platform economy
Only 21% of financial institutions employ crowdsourcing tools today. Platforms can run challenges that tap the collective brainpower and resources of a crowd, driven by a sense of competition to develop the best response. We predict that gig employees will perform 15% to 20% of the work of a typical institution within five years. This translates into significant cost savings across the board, along with the potential to improve the level of talent and innovation delivered from the employee base.

4: Improving workforce digital IQ
As people live and work longer, and unemployment rates remain low, digital training and retraining of existing workforces is particularly crucial. Despite its importance, research shows that current efforts are not achieving the desired results. Of the financial-services leaders polled in PwC’s 2018 CEO Survey, 75% reported they were concerned about shortages of digital skills within the industry.

5: Bringing an agile mind-set to the mainstream
To keep up with digital-only competitors and rapidly deliver a seamless and instant customer experience, 77% of financial institutions are turning to agile somewhere in their organizations.

6: Mastering digital labour
Over 50% of CEOs believe artificial intelligence (AI) will have a bigger impact than the internet. Getting the balance right between tasks performed by AI and tasks performed by people will be key to future success for financial institutions.

“It is clear what financial institutions need to do to build future profitability and to remain competitive. However doing it and making the necessary changes will be a huge challenge. Very soon we will start to see which CEOs have taken the productivity agenda seriously”, added John Garvey.

Find the full report: https://www.pwc.com/fsproductivity

About the research
The report sets out the important challenges and opportunities facing the financial services industry and the ways in which senior executives should respond if they wish to move beyond simple cost cutting and improve profitability in the long term.

As a result of a detailed survey, it identifies six areas where financial institutions can focus their productivity efforts to boost long term sustainable profitability.

About PwC
At PwC, our purpose is to build trust in society and solve important problems. We’re a network of firms in 158 countries with over 250,000 people who are committed to delivering quality in assurance, advisory and tax services. Find out more and tell us what matters to you by visiting us at www.pwc.com.

PwC refers to the PwC network and/or one or more of its member firms, each of which is a separate legal entity. Please see www.pwc.com/structure for further details.

The National Retail Federation today forecast that retail sales during 2019 will increase between 3.8 percent and 4.4 percent to more than $3.8 trillion despite threats from an ongoing trade war, the volatile stock market and the effects of the government shutdown.

“We believe the underlying state of the economy is sound,” NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay said. “More people are working, they’re making more money, their taxes are lower and their confidence remains high. The biggest priority is to ensure that our economy continues to grow and to avoid self-inflicted wounds. It’s time for artificial problems like trade wars and shutdowns to end, and to focus on prosperity not politics.”

Preliminary estimates show that retail sales during 2018 grew 4.6 percent over 2017 to $3.68 trillion, exceeding NRF’s forecast of at least 4.5 percent growth. The number includes online and other non-store sales, which were up 10.4 percent at $682.8 billion. That met NRF’s forecast of 10-12 percent online growth, and online is expected to grow in the same 10-12 percent range again this year. The numbers exclude automobile dealers, gasoline stations and restaurants.

Growth of between 3.8 percent and 4.4 percent would result in total 2019 retail sales of between $3.82 trillion and $3.84 trillion. Based on growth of 10-12 percent, online sales would total between $751.1 billion and $764.8 billion, which are included in the total.

The 2018 results are based on Commerce Department data up through November but include NRF estimates for December because the agency was closed during the recent government shutdown and has not yet released December figures. The results are subject to revision once December numbers become available, and government numbers are revised again each spring regardless of the shutdown.

“We are not seeing any deterioration in the financial health of the consumer,” NRF Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz said. “Consumers are in better shape than any time in the last few years. Most important for the year ahead will be the ongoing strength in the job market, which will support the consumer income and spending that are both key drivers of the economy. The bottom line is that the economy is in a good place despite the ups and downs of the stock market and other uncertainties. Growth remains solid.”

NRF expects the overall economy to gain an average of 170,000 jobs per month, down from 220,000 in 2018, and that unemployment – currently at 4 percent – will drop to 3.5 percent by the end of the year. Gross domestic product is likely to grow about 2.5 percent over 2018.

Kleinhenz said inflation and interest rates are expected to remain low this year and that retail sales have been helped by recent reductions in gasoline prices.

Retailers so far have been able to largely mitigate the impact of new tariffs on steel, aluminum and goods from China imposed in the past year. But tariffs could drive up the cost of consumer products and affect business direction and profits this year, particularly if tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese products rise from 10 percent to 25 percent as currently scheduled for March 1, he said.

It has been difficult to measure the impact of the recently ended government shutdown. Government workers will be paid retroactively but some spending and expenses such as dining out or entertaining have been lost and government contractors will not receive back pay, Kleinhenz said. A key issue is how quickly the Internal Revenue Service will be able to process a potential backlog of tax returns, which would affect first-quarter spending, he said.

About NRF
The National Retail Federation is the world’s largest retail trade association. Based in Washington, D.C., NRF represents discount and department stores, home goods and specialty stores, Main Street merchants, grocers, wholesalers, chain restaurants and internet retailers from the United States and more than 45 countries. Retail is the nation’s largest private-sector employer, supporting one in four U.S. jobs — 42 million working Americans. Contributing $2.6 trillion to annual GDP, retail is a daily barometer for the nation’s economy. NRF.com

Statement from FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D. and Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research on new policies to advance development of safe and effective cell and gene therapies

The FDA is witnessing a surge of cell and gene therapy products entering early development, evidenced by a large upswing in the number of investigational new drug (IND) applications. Based on this activity, we anticipate that the number of product approvals for cell and gene therapies will grow in the coming years, reflecting significant scientific advancement and the clinical promise of these new innovations.

We anticipate that by 2020 we will be receiving more than 200 INDs per year, building upon our total of more than 800 active cell-based or directly administered gene therapy INDs currently on file with the FDA. And by 2025, we predict that the FDA will be approving 10 to 20 cell and gene therapy products a year based on an assessment of the current pipeline and the clinical success rates of these products. During this period without a FY19 appropriation for FDA, we’ve been focused on making sure that we continue critical aspects of our work, to the extent permitted by law. At this time, for products covered by a user fee program, including cell and gene therapy products, our review of existing medical product applications and associated policy development is funded by limited carryover user fee balances. We’ll continue to update the public on how we’re approaching our work.

We’re working to expand our review group dedicated to the evaluation of these applications to keep pace with the rapid expansion in new product development. Our eventual goal is to add about 50 additional clinical reviewers to the group charged with overseeing the clinical investigation, development, and review of these products.

The activity reflects a turning point in the development of these technologies and their application to human health. It’s similar to the period marking an acceleration in the development of antibody drugs in the late 1990s, and the mainstreaming of monoclonal antibodies as the backbone of modern treatment regimens.

In the case of antibodies, it was a product innovation that sparked an inflection point in the advance of those products, after which antibody drugs became a mainstay of medical care. Specifically, it was the widespread adoption of safe and effective platforms for humanizing antibodies and, eventually, developing fully human monoclonal antibodies that weren’t rejected by the body’s innate immune system.

In the case of gene therapy, it’s similarly a product innovation that has marked an inflection point in the development of these therapies, and a surge in new product activity. In this case, it was the advent of safe and effective vectors for the delivery of gene therapy products, such as the adoption of adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors.

The fact that product innovations are a key enabling advance in promoting the development of these products into effective therapies underscores the importance of advancing sound policy related to innovation around these product-related issues.

Gene therapy products now have the potential to cure intractable diseases, and fundamentally alter the trajectory of many other vexing illnesses. To advance these opportunities, the FDA plans to introduce additional new policy guidance and other advances in our drug development framework in 2019. Today, we want to take an opportunity to preview that policy agenda and offer some perspective on the focus of our policies over the coming year as it relates to these technologies.

First, we will work with sponsors to make maximum use of our expedited programs including regenerative medicine advanced therapy (RMAT) designation and accelerated approval. We believe that for gene therapy products that are offering meaningful therapeutic advantage over available therapies for a serious or life-threatening disease or condition, the accelerated approval pathway offers some unique opportunities.

For one thing, the accelerated approval pathway may offer a faster route to approval for new treatments, including potentially curative benefits in significant, unmet medical needs. But the pathway also offers additional authorities for FDA to require postmarket follow-up studies. Since many of the risks associated with gene therapy products relate to questions about the product’s durability and potential for rare instances of off-target effects, it may not be feasible to conduct pre-market trials that address all these theoretical risks in any reasonably sized study. Robust postmarket tools, such as those afforded to the FDA under the accelerated approval pathway, particularly for products granted RMAT designation, can help achieve the goal of developing a larger data set to address these theoretical risks in a timely fashion.

Second, we’re planning a series of clinical guidance documents related to different areas of active product development. Among the clinical guidance documents that we intend to advance include guidance documents for the development of gene therapy products for inherited blood disorders such as hemophilia, among others.

We also intend to develop a guidance document for providing recommendations on product development issues related to the development of gene therapy products for certain neurodegenerative diseases. Here the accelerated approval pathway may only be applicable in certain circumstances.

For example, we intend to propose guidance to address how the accelerated approval pathway may be used when the target of the gene therapy product is an underlying monogenetic change that causes a serious disorder not addressed by available therapy. In these cases, the gene therapy could offer the potential to alter or cure the underlying genetic defect that gives rise to, and causes the advance of, a disease.

Our guidance will also propose how a more traditional approach to drug development may be more appropriate if the gene therapy creates a genetic alteration aimed at treating the symptoms of a neurodegenerative disease, or potentially altering its course by altering the expression of a protein or enzyme believed to play a role in the advance of a disease. In these cases, the gene therapy wouldn’t be intended to cure the underlying condition but instead, affect its course or symptoms. We intend to explain that demonstrating the safety and benefits of such an approach could typically require a more traditional clinical study and recommend ways this can be achieved.

Other critical challenges also arise in the development of safe and effective cell-based gene therapies such as CAR-T cells, including the complexities associated with manufacturing these products in a safe, reliable and cost-effective way, and in a manner that allows for the efficient use of these products in the clinic. Our new guidance will recommend parameters for how innovators can introduce advances in manufacturing that promote the more efficient development and application of CAR-T therapies without necessarily requiring costly new clinical investigations. We intend to propose ways to help ensure the safety and effectiveness of the resulting products through available technologies and examinations, and when limited clinical bridging studies may be needed prior to approval of a change, possibly followed by the submission of additional clinical information supplied by real-world data after the change is introduced.

This category of guidance documents that we intend to develop will help advance scientific principles related to the efficient development of CAR-T and other cellular therapy products. The guidance that we intend to issue will promote a better understanding of the critical quality attributes and other factors related to product manufacturing. One of our goals here is to allow for the development of clearer parameters for when minor manufacturing changes can be made that wouldn’t require additional bridging studies. We will also be working with stakeholders and intend to hold a public meeting in the coming months to discuss ways to expedite the necessary clinical bridging studies when more than minor changes are introduced in the manufacturing process, but such changes do not represent a transformation to a fundamentally different product. We intend to introduce various topics, such as the refinement of genetic constructs and the introduction of more efficient cell culture methods.

We also intend to develop new guidance to continue to promote the efficient development of safe and effective cell-based regenerative medicine products.

Though we are very encouraged by the advances in science and clinical development in this field, we remain concerned at the FDA that a number of individuals working in this space are developing products that are subject to pre-market approval, but these individuals are operating outside of regulatory compliance and, in some cases, these products are creating potential significant safety concerns to patients based on how we believe the cell therapies are being manufactured and delivered to patients. In these cases, the manufacturers have failed to respond to the FDA’s request to have a dialogue with the agency about how to come into regulatory compliance. We plan additional enforcement actions in 2019 to address products that pose a significant risk of potential harm to patients.

At the same time, we are committed to continue to develop efficient pathways by which sponsors can come into regulatory compliance while working toward approval of a new Biologics License Application (BLA) for their products. To advance this goal, one guidance that we intend to issue this year will outline a proposed innovative trial design by which individual researchers can pool their clinical data after following a common manufacturing protocol, and thereby develop a more robust data set for purposes of gaining a BLA.

The idea here is to assist small sponsors, including academic investigators, who may not be of sufficient scale to conduct a clinical trial on their own, to band together with others similarly situated. These sponsors can then pool clinical data to demonstrate the safety and effectiveness of a product that is manufactured with a common manufacturing protocol and product quality specifications, and used for a common clinical purpose, but where the therapies are being delivered locally by different investigators and institutions. We already have consortiums of academic investigators who are in active discussions with the FDA about this proposed new approach. The guidance document we intend to issue will outline more clearly the recommended procedures for pursuing this novel approach.

Taken together, these guidance documents, along with other policies that we plan to issue in 2019, are aimed at helping advance the field of cell and gene therapy.

We believe these cell-based and gene therapy technologies hold tremendous promise for addressing some of the most intractable diseases. But with their novelty, also comes new uncertainties and some unique, theoretical risks. Our efforts are aimed at helping innovators proactively address these potential risks, while we outline a modern and efficient pathway for the continued development of these innovations.

The FDA, an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, protects the public health by assuring the safety, effectiveness, and security of human and veterinary drugs, vaccines and other biological products for human use, and medical devices. The agency also is responsible for the safety and security of our nation’s food supply, cosmetics, dietary supplements, products that give off electronic radiation, and for regulating tobacco products.

SOURCE U.S. Food and Drug Administration

Related Links
http://www.fda.gov

Record-setting domestic passenger traffic and robust domestic economy to drive the need for 2,300 new airplanes, valued at $320 billion

Boeing [NYSE: BA] raised its long-term forecast for commercial airplanes in India as unprecedented domestic passenger traffic and rapidly expanding low-cost carriers (LCCs) drive the need for 2,300 new jets – valued at $320 billion – over the next 20 years.

This year alone, more than 10 million passengers, on average, traveled within India each month.

“To meet this increased domestic air traffic growth, we see the vast majority of available airplane seats coming from LCCs,” said Keskar. “The success of this market segment will mean more than 80 percent of all new airplane deliveries in India will be single-aisles. And the superior economics and fuel efficiency of the new 737 MAX airplane will be the perfect choice for Indian carriers.”

According to Boeing’s Commercial Market Outlook (CMO), India’s commercial aviation industry has achieved 51 consecutive months of double-digit growth. This growth is matched in other sectors of the country’s economy.

“The Indian economy is projected to grow by nearly 350 percent over the next two decades to become the third largest economy in the world,” said Dinesh Keskar, senior vice president of Sales for Asia Pacific and India, Boeing Commercial Airplanes. “This will continue to drive the growth of India’s middle class and its propensity to travel both domestically and internationally, resulting in the need for more new fuel-efficient short- and long-haul airplanes.”

New Airplane Deliveries to India through 2037 by size
Airplane type	Seats	Total deliveries	Market value
Regional jets	90 and below	10	<$1 billion
Single-aisle	90 and above	1,940	$220 billion
Widebody	200 and above	350	$100 billion
Total		2,300	$320 billion

With more than five percent of the world’s fleet expected to operate in India by 2037, services will continue to be a major driver of growth in the region’s commercial aviation industry. Commercial services such as flight training, engineering and maintenance, digital analytics among others will provide airlines with optimal operational efficiencies as they continue to expand to meet growth in the marketplace. In the South Asian market, including India, Boeing forecasts a commercial services market valued at $430 billion over the next 20 years.

Formerly known as Boeing’s Current Market Outlook, the CMO is the longest running jet forecast and regarded as the most comprehensive analysis of the commercial aviation industry. The full report can be found at www.boeing.com/cmo.

Retail industry employment in November increased by 18,600 jobs seasonally adjusted from October, accounting for 12 percent of the 155,000-job increase reported by the Labor Department for the economy overall, the National Retail Federation said today. Year-over-year, retail employment was down by 16,300 jobs unadjusted as a tight labor market made it difficult to fill positions. The retail numbers exclude automobile dealers, gasoline stations and restaurants.

“These are satisfying numbers that indicate the economy continues its momentum of growth,” NRF Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz said. “The gains have come despite events ranging from wildfires in some parts of the country to snowstorms in other areas that likely kept the growth from being even larger. In retail, the tight labor market has created sizable challenges in hiring – there are actually more retail jobs available than there are people to fill them. Retailers would hire more workers if they could find them.”

“It’s significant that retail accounts for roughly one out of eight of the jobs created across the economy in November, which shows the importance of retail to job creation,” Kleinhenz said. “And general merchandise – which includes department stores – accounted for a quarter of the nation’s job gains.”

November’s retail job numbers followed a revised loss of 9,100 jobs in October from September. The three-month moving average as of November showed a loss of 6,700 jobs. Unemployment for all of retail was 4.2 percent, which combined with October’s 4.1 percent makes the lowest two-month average since the Great Recession.

November saw monthly gains 39,300 jobs at general merchandise stores, which include department stores and warehouse clubs, and that number alone accounted for a quarter of job gains seen economy-wide in November. Jobs increased by 9,800 at miscellaneous stores; 2,900 at food and beverage stores and 2,100 in non-store, which includes online. There were losses of 11,100 jobs at sporting goods and hobby stores and 10,900 at electronics and appliances stores.

Economy-wide, average hourly earnings in November were up 6 cents over October to $27.35 and up 81 cents from a year ago, a year-over-year increase of 3.1 percent. The Labor Department said overall unemployment remained at 3.7 percent, its lowest level since December 1969.

Kleinhenz noted that retail job numbers reported by the Labor Department do not provide an accurate picture of the industry because they count only employees who work in stores while excluding retail workers in other parts of the business such as corporate headquarters, distribution centers, call centers and innovation labs.

About NRF

The National Retail Federation is the world’s largest retail trade association. Based in Washington, D.C., NRF represents discount and department stores, home goods and specialty stores, Main Street merchants, grocers, wholesalers, chain restaurants and internet retailers from the United States and more than 45 countries. Retail is the nation’s largest private-sector employer, supporting one in four U.S. jobs — 42 million working Americans. Contributing $2.6 trillion to annual GDP, retail is a daily barometer for the nation’s economy. NRF.com