> As I recall, the British stats are based on who registers for
>unemployment benefits, which produces pleasingly low figures, and
>there's only a yearly survey comparable to the U.S. household tally.
It only produced pleasingly low figures because the, then, Conservative government adjusted the figure so often (60 changes in all if I remember), excluding more and more welfare benefit claimants (such as the long-term unemployed). After a while people started looking at figures for claimants rather than the official tally of 'unemployed' as more indicative.
That said, the labour force in the UK has grown a great deal - as has the US. If the weight of this exchange is that unemployment is a problem (C Jannuzi) or its not (D Henwood) then I'm with Doug.
It's a mistake to think 'we're in a recession', 'in a recession there's mass unemployment' 'therefore there must be mass unemployment'. It would be more interesting to ask how it is that in this 'recession' mass unemployment has not become a problem, in which case we might get closer to the differentia specifica of this recession. -- James Heartfield Sustaining Architecture in the Anti-Machine Age is available at GBP19.99, plus GBP5.01 p&p from Publications, audacity.org, 8 College Close, Hackney, London, E9 6ER. Make cheques payable to 'Audacity Ltd'. www.audacity.org