Smart decisions are based on more than government statistics, agency reports, news releases, interest rates and stock quotes. We've selected a few fascinating statistics below that illuminate the markets, the world of financial services and big business:
- Assets Vanguard Group has added since 1996, when Jack Brennan became CEO (he steps down in 2009): $1.1 trillion
- Average starting salary (not including starting bonus) of newly minted MBAs: $92,360
- Number of business schools offering degrees in professional golf management: 20
- Minimum handicap required to be admitted to Florida State's golf-management program: 12
- Number of domestic jobs eliminated by U.S. multinational companies from 2000 to 2005: 2 million
- Total U.S. exports in 2007 as a percentage of gross domestic product: 11.8
- Estimated value of transactions made with prepaid cards in 2008: $42 billion
- Portion of U.S. GDP that is accounted for by consumer spending: 70%
- Portion of China's GDP accounted for by consumer spending: 33%
- Ratio in 2007 of U.S. spending in grocery stores to that in restaurants: 1:1
- Projected number of enclosed shopping malls that will be built in the U.S. in 2008: 0
- Worst states in which to do business, as ranked by a poll of 605 CEOs: California and New York
- Best states: Texas and Nevada
- Number of Major League baseball players implicated in the steroid scandal who were caught because they had paid by personal check: 16
- Average cost of a domestic business trip in 2008: $1,110
- Average cost of an international business trip: $3,171
- Metro area with the highest percentage of female top-level executives: Washington, DC: 27
- Average individual income-tax refund in 2007: $2,324
- Percent of people using tax refunds to fund a vacation: 13
- Amount earned at auction for 301 rare pennies sold by a coin collector in Burbank, Calif.: $10.7 million
- Number of individual life-insurance policies purchased in 2006: 10.9 million
- Number purchased in 2002: 14.7 million
- Projected percentage of U.S. population in 2050 who will be foreign-born: 19
- Amount Americans spent on their pets in 2005, up from $17 billion a decade ago: $35.9 billion
- Cost of one night in the Presidential Suite at Manhattan's Ritzy Canine Carriage House: $175
Sources: 1 Businessweek; 2 Graduate Management Admission Council; 3 Business Week; 4 Florida State; 5-6 Bureau of Economic Analysis; 7 Aite Group; 8-9 U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, United Nations; 10 Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture; 11 International Council of Shopping Centers, NY; 12-13 Chief Executive Magazine; 14 Mitchell Report; 15-16 American Express Business Travel;17 Greater Washington Initiative; 18-19 BIGresearch/National Retail Foundation; 20 Businessweek; 21-22 American Council of Life Insurers; 23 Pew Research Center; 24-25 Bloomberg