Within three years she had pocketed two degrees in finance and statistics.

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Yet in Saudi Arabia, official statistics indicate that just 5% of Saudis working in finance and property are female.

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Since 1980, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of people employed in finance, broadly defined, has shot up from roughly five million to more than seven and a half million.

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According to my calculations on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Reserve, employment in business management and finance during the past 20 years correlated negatively at a moderate magnitude with changes in the interbank interest rate.

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Finance Secretary John Swinney said the statistics showed the largest fall in the unemployment rate in Scotland since early 2008.

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They say the labour trends are hard to square with other statistics, logging decidedly poor growth performances in key sectors such as construction and finance.

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Family gifts that finance the living expenses of a college student who otherwise appears in the statistics as a low income household are also not counted, again exaggerating income inequality, or at least differences in standard of living.

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