Well, another problem in comparing Europe and the US is the very high rate of people in prison in the US especially minority males. They do not get counted as part of the labor force and this is a serious distortion in making international comparisons. As a percent of the working age population, employment is not all that much higher in the US than in Western Europe, if at all. The big difference is that a lot of the US unemployed are in jail, goody goody, while the Europeans are on various kinds of social safety nets that mainstream US economists waste a lot of paper complaining about, naughty naughty.
Another important issue internationally is again that of labor force participation. Here the gender issue is very important. Thus when one hears that the unemployment rate is higher in Sweden one must also keep in mind that labor force participation by women is much higher. OTOH it is lower in Germany and Switzerland and some other countries. Japan is the farthest off in that regard, which is the main reason why the unemployment rate in Japan which is about the same as that in the US is much more socially painful (along with other social issues). Barkley Rosser -----Original Message----- From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Friday, June 18, 1999 1:19 PM Subject: RE: Unemployment 4.2%
>Seth Ackerman wrote:
>
>>I've always thought the best way to measure changes in unemployment is
>>to create an index based of the percentage of working-aged people
>>without jobs. It wouldn't measure "labor-market tightness" but it would
>>measure something close to what we think of as "labor-market
>>well-being."
>
>Or in other words, 100% less the employment/population ratio. By that
>measure, the U.S. working class is a lot better off than the Western
>European working class. Would you want to make that argument?
>
>Doug
>