The extreme economic outlier that is Greece, in 7 charts: 53eig.ht/1GMgIFU http://t.co/gb3zkgUqqJ—
(@FiveThirtyEight) July 04, 2015
Greece in 7 charts
06 Jul 2015 3 Comments
in budget deficits, business cycles, currency unions, economic growth, Euro crisis, fiscal policy, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, unemployment Tags: Eurosclerosis, Greece
How great was the Great Depression unemployment? The official and Darby estimates of US unemployment in the 1930s
17 Jun 2015 Leave a comment
in business cycles, economic history, great depression, labour economics, macroeconomics, unemployment Tags: Euro sclerosis, measurement error, Michael Darby
The graph below shows two different series for unemployment in the 1930s in the USA: the official BLS level by Lebergott; and a data series constructed famously by Michael Darby.
Figure 1: US unemployment rate, 1929 – 40: Darby and Lebergott estimates
Source: Robert Margot (1993).
Darby includes workers in the emergency government labour force as employed – the most important being the Civil Works Administration (CWA) and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Once these workfare programs are accounted for, the level of U.S. unemployment fell from 22.9% in 1932 to 9.1% in 1937, a reduction of 13.8%.
For 1934-1941, the corrected unemployment levels are reduced by two to three-and-a half million people and the unemployment rates by 4 to 7 percentage points after 1933.
Not surprisingly, Darby titled his 1976 Journal of Political Economy article Three-and-a-Half Million U.S. Employees Have Been Mislaid: Or, an Explanation of Unemployment, 1934-1941. The corrected data by Darby shows stronger movement toward the natural unemployment rate after 1933.
From about 1935, the unemployment rate in the Great Depression in the USA is not much different from what it is in Europe in recent decades under Eurosclerosis.
In the 1930s in the USA, many unemployed were employed by the Civil Works Administration and the Works Progress administration. In contemporary Europe, the unemployed are simply paid not to work under their welfare state arrangements.
French, German and Italian unemployment rates, 1956 – 2013
03 Jun 2015 Leave a comment
in economic growth, economic history, job search and matching, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, unemployment Tags: Eurosclerosis, France, Germany, Italy
Figure 1: French, German and Italian unemployment rates, 1956 – 2013
Source: OECD StatExtract.
Unemployment by educational level and degree level
02 Jun 2015 Leave a comment
in business cycles, economics of education, human capital, job search and matching, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, occupational choice, unemployment Tags: education premium, graduate premium
Don't listen to naysayers. College is worth it, even for so-so students. nyti.ms/1JC1ZiN http://t.co/Wnr5BnwumM—
The Upshot (@UpshotNYT) April 24, 2015
Long-term unemployment by sex, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK and USA, 1968 – 2013
26 May 2015 Leave a comment
in business cycles, job search and matching, labour economics, labour supply, unemployment Tags: Australia, British economy, Canada
Source: OECD StatExtract
Source: OECD StatExtract
Male labour force participation has been in a long-term decline
24 May 2015 Leave a comment
in gender, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, unemployment Tags: labour demographics, labour force participation, male labour force participation, reversing gender gap
NEWS FLASH: The Labor Force Participation Rate for Men Has Been Steadily Trending Downward for the last 67 Years! http://t.co/N66WJJnHsF—
Mark J. Perry (@Mark_J_Perry) May 08, 2015
Youth unemployment in America by sex and education
21 May 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of education, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, unemployment Tags: great recession, labour demographics
The robots are coming, the robots are coming – been there, done that in Japan
12 May 2015 1 Comment
in applied price theory, development economics, economic history, entrepreneurship, growth miracles, industrial organisation, labour economics, labour supply, survivor principle, unemployment Tags: creative destruction, entrepreneurial alertness, innovation, Japan, technological unemployment
When I was a kid, I used to like reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I read them from cover to cover.
One of the things I recalled from the Encyclopaedia Britannica was that in 1961 nearly half of the Japanese workforce worked in the agricultural sector.
I notice that anomaly when I was reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica entry on Japan in the 1970s. Japan had undergoing an economic transformation since my Encyclopaedia Britannica’s were written in 1961. It was very much out of date.
Australian manufacturing was being outcompeted in every direction from automobiles to clothing and footwear by the Japanese manufacturing sector back when I was a teenager.
The Japanese economic miracle absorbed the Japanese agricultural labour force without anybody having time to shout "the robots are coming, the robots are coming".
There is a lesson in there somewhere for the current breathless journalism, with far too many academic fellow travellers about "the robots are coming, the robots are coming".
When I was a student at graduate school in Japan, I visited a Japanese factory in 1996 that was completely automated bar one function. Only once did a human hand actually touch the electrical goods they were making. Naturally, at the Q&A session at the end of our visit, I asked when was his job going to be automated.
US and Canadian unemployment rates, 1956–2014
10 May 2015 Leave a comment
in business cycles, economic growth, job search and matching, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, politics - USA, unemployment Tags: Canada, unemployment rates
Source: OECD StatExtract
Unemployed people are defined as those who report that they are without work, that they are available for work and that they have taken active steps to find work in the last four weeks.
The ILO Guidelines specify what actions count as active steps to find work; these include answering vacancy notices, visiting factories, construction sites and other places of work, and placing advertisements in the press as well as registering with labour offices.
Unemployment isn’t much of an issue for the well educated in recessions
09 May 2015 Leave a comment
in business cycles, economic growth, economics of education, human capital, job search and matching, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, occupational choice, unemployment Tags: labour demographics, prosperity and depression
#StayinSchool
April jobless rate for people 25+ with
B.A. or more: 2.7%
No h.s. diploma: 8.6%
on.wsj.com/1H63SHl http://t.co/UwzHjiaQz9—
Sudeep Reddy (@Reddy) May 08, 2015
April jobless rate by race/ethnicity:
Black 9.6%
Hispanic: 6.9%
White 4.7%
Asian 4.4%
on.wsj.com/1H619hg http://t.co/qgRWa7MB85—
Sudeep Reddy (@Reddy) May 08, 2015
The sick men of Europe? British and Irish unemployment rates, 1956–2013
09 May 2015 Leave a comment
in economic growth, economic history, great depression, job search and matching, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, unemployment Tags: British economy, Celtic Tiger, Ireland, prosperity and depression, sick man of Europe, unemployment rates
Source: OECD StatExtract
Ireland and Britain justly earned the name the sick man of Europe in the 1980s. Irish unemployment was in the mid teens much of the 1980s because the Irish economy was in a great depression from 1973 to 1992.
Unemployed people are defined as those who report that they are without work, that they are available for work and that they have taken active steps to find work in the last four weeks. The ILO Guidelines specify what actions count as active steps to find work; these include answering vacancy notices, visiting factories, construction sites and other places of work, and placing advertisements in the press as well as registering with labour offices.
New Zealand has one of the highest minimum wages
08 May 2015 2 Comments
in economics of religion, labour economics, minimum wage, unemployment Tags: minimum wage
College graduates don’t really notice recessions
02 May 2015 Leave a comment
in business cycles, economics of education, great recession, human capital, labour economics, macroeconomics, occupational choice, politics - USA, unemployment Tags: College premium, education premium, labour demographics
Our monthly update on the question: should I stay in school? blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015… http://t.co/IaVxoAJmqe—
Josh Zumbrun (@JoshZumbrun) April 03, 2015
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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