14 Aug 2015
by Jim Rose
in currency unions, Euro crisis, job search and matching, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, unemployment
Tags: British economy, equilibrium unemployment rate, France, Germany, long-term unemployment, natural unemployment rate, social insurance, unemployment duration, unemployment insurance, welfare state
As the British labour market and long-term unemployment was starting to get something like that in the USA, the USA started to have unemployment it was more like the European labour markets in terms of the number of long-term unemployed. Nothing much happened in Germany and France.

Source: OECD StatExtract.
12 Aug 2015
by Jim Rose
in business cycles, economic history, Euro crisis, job search and matching, labour economics, macroeconomics, unemployment
Tags: employment law, equilibrium unemployment rate, Eurosclerosis, Italy, labour market regulation, natural unemployment rate, unemployment duration
Unemployment of more than a year was slowly tapering down in Italy before the global financial crisis, but ever so slowly.

Source: OECD StatExtract.
11 Aug 2015
by Jim Rose
in economic history, Euro crisis, fiscal policy, job search and matching, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, unemployment, welfare reform
Tags: equilibrium unemployment rate, Eurosclerosis, German unification, Germany, natural unemployment rate, poverty traps, unemployment duration, unemployment insurance, welfare state
German long term unemployment has been pretty stable albeit with an up-and-down after German unification. There is also a fall in long-term unemployment after some labour market reforms around 2005.

Source: OECD StatExtract.
10 Aug 2015
by Jim Rose
in business cycles, human capital, job search and matching, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, politics - New Zealand, unemployment
Tags: equilibrium unemployment rate, hysteresis, long-term unemployment, natural unemployment rate, unemployment duration, unemployment rates
There has been bit of a wild ride in long-term unemployment in New Zealand. Long-term unemployment – longer than one year – ranging from just over 8% of unemployment in 1986 to nearly 40% in 1992 then down to 5% in 2008. Clearly the duration of unemployment in New Zealand is highly sensitive to the business cycle unlike the case in the USA or UK.

Source: OECD StatExtract.
This sensitivity of long-term unemployment to the business cycle does not bode well for the hypothesis of hysteresis where human capital depreciates the longer a jobseeker is out of employment. For this hypothesis to hold, there must be some enduring aspect of long-term unemployment rather than just going up and down with the business cycle rather noticeably.

The rival hypothesis to hysteresis is the long-term unemployed tend to be those who have a lot of trouble getting employment, which is why they end up been unemployed for a long time. Again in New Zealand, these less employable jobseekers appear to be able to find jobs quite easily when the labour market is good.
09 Aug 2015
by Jim Rose
in business cycles, economic history, global financial crisis (GFC), job search and matching, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, unemployment
Tags: British disease, British economy, equilibrium unemployment rate, Margaret Thatcher, natural unemployment rate, unemployment duration, unemployment rates
In contrast to the USA, there is been a long-term decline in long-term unemployment, that is unemployment of more than a year, in the British economy over the 1990s. The situation then stabilised and then increased after the global financial crisis. There is also a rather rapid fall in long-term unemployment in the mid-1980s as the British economy recovered under Thatchernomics

Source: OECD StatExtract.
08 Aug 2015
by Jim Rose
in budget deficits, great recession, job search and matching, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, politics - USA, unemployment, welfare reform
Tags: natural unemployment rate, taxation and labour supply, unemployment duration, unemployment insurance, unemployment rates, welfare state
The Great Recession was the first recession in the USA in a good 40 to 50 years where the composition of employment changed by much. Even the big recession at the beginning of the 1980s did not do much to the composition of unemployment by duration in the USA.

Source: OECD StatExtract.
Those unemployed for more than a year moved from barely double digits even in a bad recession prior to 2008 to coming on one-third of all unemployed. Likewise, those unemployed for less than a month halved from 40% to 20%. Something changed in the US labour market with the Great Recession and the long extensions of unemployment insurance from 26 weeks to 52 weeks and then 99 weeks.
08 Aug 2015
by Jim Rose
in business cycles, economic history, global financial crisis (GFC), great recession, job search and matching, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, unemployment
Tags: Australia, Canada, unemployment rates

Source: OECD StatExtract.
I have no information as to why there is a sudden surge in the Canadian unemployment duration rate in 2001.
08 Aug 2015
by Jim Rose
in Euro crisis, job search and matching, labour economics, macroeconomics, minimum wage, unemployment
Tags: employment law, equilibrium unemployment rates, Eurosclerosis, expressive voting, labour market regulation, natural unemployment rate, offsetting behaviour, rational irrationality, unintended consequences
07 Aug 2015
by Jim Rose
in economic history, global financial crisis (GFC), job search and matching, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, politics - New Zealand, unemployment
Tags: Australia, equilibrium unemployment rate, natural unemployment rate, unemployment duration
As with New Zealand, Australian long-term unemployment seems to go up and down quite a lot with recessions such as those in the early 1980s and early 1990s but not after the global financial crisis.

Source: OECD StatExtract.
05 Aug 2015
by Jim Rose
in economic history, Euro crisis, job search and matching, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, unemployment
Tags: employment law, equilibrium unemployment rate, France, labour market regulation, natural unemployment rate, unemployment duration
Nothing really changes in France recently unemployment duration. Italian labour market is notorious for having very low inflows and outflows from employment and unemployment.

Source: OECD StatExtract.
04 Aug 2015
by Jim Rose
in labour economics, minimum wage, politics - USA, unemployment
Tags: aggressive voting, antimarket bias, living wage, offsetting behaviour, rational ignorance, rational irrationality, The fatal conceit, The pretence to knowledge, unintended consequences
03 Aug 2015
by Jim Rose
in labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, poverty and inequality, unemployment, welfare reform
Tags: social insurance, taxation and labour supply, unemployment benefits, welfare reform
31 Jul 2015
by Jim Rose
in labour economics, labour supply, poverty and inequality, unemployment, welfare reform
Tags: James Bartholomew, poverty traps, social insurance, Social Security, taxation and the labour supply, welfare reform, welfare state
30 Jul 2015
by Jim Rose
in business cycles, currency unions, economic growth, Euro crisis, job search and matching, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, unemployment
Tags: employment law, employment regulation, EU, Euro sclerosis, Euroland, Eurosclerosis, Japan, labour market regulation
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