--- Jerry Monaco <monacojerry at gmail.com> wrote:
> Isn't unemployment simply counted better in places
> like France and German
> than the U.S.? Wouldn't a more realistic accounting
> of unemployment and
> underemployment and misemployment in the U.S. reveal
> that a "flexible" labor
> force does not provide much more than the inflexible
> kind in Germany and
> France?
Maybe, maybe not. However, you can calculate labor force participation rate in relation to working age population (15+ years of age), which does not depend on counting the unemployed as distinguished from those not in the labor force.
Based on the ILO data http://laborsta.ilo.org/ the ratio of total employment to working age (15+) population in 2004 in France is 50.2%, in Germany it is 50.5%, and in the US it is 59.6%. These ratios clearly suggest that the US has a genuinely higher employment rate than either France or Germany and this is not an artifact of "creative accounting" for the unemployed.
Wojtek
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