Dunno about the source or calc. of the Brazil figure. However, from tangling with such topics here, the following comment. Where bustling informal sectors exist, unemployment figures mislead. Underemployment -- the inability to reproduce labor power on available wages -- is a much worse problem. Here, we did an exercise to fold "undermployment" into and "unemployemnt" figure, to give folks a wake up call. Unemplyomet, stricly defined, runs about 3-6% here, one of the lowest figures in South Am. But if you look at total wage bill and distribute it at a level that allows people to eat and sheler themslevs, and call the rest "unemployed", the number jumps to about 30%. Might there be a similar thing going on with Brazilian figures?
Tom
At 08:28 28/11/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Last week's Economist said of Cardoso's ferocious budget cuts and interest
>rates hikes that "some economists see unemploment reaching 13% next year."
>["Latin American and the Market, end of second paragraph]
>
>Um, could be possibly be true? I thought it would be have to be heaps
>worse than that. That's not that far from the EU average. If it isn't
>true, does anyone have an explanation of how The Economist could arrive at
>such a number?
>
>Michael
>__________________________________________________________________________
>Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com
>
>You're asking the leader of the Western world a chickenshit question
>like that? --Lydon Baines Johnson, to reporter (attrib.)
>__________________________________________________________________________
>
>
Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242 Email: tkruse at albatros.cnb.net