The Big Four accounting firms have recorded their strongest financial performance since the collapse of Enron as corporate clients rushed to transform their businesses during the coronavirus pandemic. In aggregate, the leading pack, which includes Deloitte, EY and PwC, will have racked up $167.3bn in revenue for the financial year ended 2021, a 7 per cent increase. It is the strongest collective result since the Enron scandal led to the collapse of Arthur Andersen in 2002 and reduced the Big Five to the Big Four.

Weekly jobless claims reached tumbled last week, reaching a fresh 52-year low as the U.S. jobs market climbs out of its pandemic-era hole, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Initial filings for unemployment insurance totaled 184,000 for the week ended Dec. 4, the lowest going back to Sept. 6, 1969, which saw 182,000.

The Covid-19 pandemic last year drove the biggest increase in death benefits paid by U.S. life insurers since the 1918 influenza epidemic, an industry trade group said. Death-benefit payments rose 15.4% in 2020 to $90.43 billion, mostly due to the pandemic, according to the American Council of Life Insurers. Covid-19 also spurred the fastest rise in sales of insurance policies in 25 years