> 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?
Eurostat has tried to come up with a comparable methodology, and estimates that unemployment is 8.3% in the EU and 4.8% in the US. But two caveats: (1) job growth in the EU has outpaced the US for some time now, and (2) two million US adults are locked up in jail, while millions more have dropped out of the labor market altogether -- labor force participation rates peaked in the US at 67% in 2000 and are still hovering around 66%. By contrast, EU rates have risen from 62% to 63%, I think -- I'll have to rummage around for the exact numbers.
The EU is still recovering from the Euromonetarism of the 1990-1995 period, which choked off growth, plunged Eastern Europe into a depression and drove unemployment to 11%. Once interest rates returned to sane levels in 1996, employment began to expand again.
-- DRR