The world's most expensive desert has a 2-carat diamond on the top. Confectionery manufacturers must be marvelling at their chocolate box balance sheets in the middle of the economic downturn. That's because sales of chocolate products are up. Chocoholics have pushed one UK company's profits up 25%. In Syria, one of the largest producers has increased sales over the past six years from 150 packs a day to more than a million.

Times have been hard for job seekers in many developed economies since the economic downturn started in 2008.