[lbo-talk] Why High French Unemployment Rate?

[Wojtek S]

Another measurement related possibility is the interpretation of the
"work seeking" criterion by the LFS respondents themselves.  To
qualify - a person must be actively looking for work - if not, that
person is not considered unemployed if if without job (see
http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2000/06/art1full.pdf).

So if the respondents in the US are for some reason more likely to say
they have not been looking for work in the reference period (usually 4
weeks) than respondents in EU, the US is bound to have lower
unemployment rate than EU even if the same share of the economically
active population is without work, and even if LFS are accurate in
both cases.

Wojtek

On Sat, Dec 22, 2012 at 10:06 PM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Dec 22, 2012, at 7:12 PM, Jason Hecht <jayhstata at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Some money manager on Bloomberg was going on a rant about how France
>> has had an unemployment rate above 9% since 1992 (according to the FED
>> FRED database, it has averaged 9.3% from 1992-2011) .
>>
>> Is this because the France have a more accurate "official" measure,
>> equivalent  to our all-in "U-6" (1994-2011, 10.2%)?  Or is there a
>> more nuanced reason?
>
> The OECD and the BLS massage international unemployment rates into comparable figures. Here's the BLS version:
>
> http://www.bls.gov/fls/intl_unemployment_rates_monthly.htm
>
> Short answer: no.
>
> Doug
>
>
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-- 
Wojtek

"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."