Equilibrium unemployment rate: USA, UK, France, Germany, Canada & Australia, 1985-2017

I do admire the way in which the USA has been able to have a steadily falling equilibrium unemployment rate since 1984 through thick and thin. The Great Recession had no impact on the US equilibrium unemployment rate. Not only has the largest member been able to do this, the OECD host country (red squares) has had a pretty steady natural unemployment rate too all things considered.

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Source: OECD Economic Outlook June 2016 Data extracted on 01 Jun 2016 12:40 UTC (GMT) from OECD.Stat

Danish and New Zealand equilibrium unemployment rates since 1972 @nzlabour @grantrobertson1

https://twitter.com/KiwiLiveNews/status/688503382181449728

The Labour Party wants the New Zealand labour market to be more like that in Denmark. The early 1990s recession New Zealand aside, New Zealand has always had a lower equilibrium unemployment rate than Denmark.

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Data extracted on 17 Jan 2016 03:29 UTC (GMT) from OECD.Stat.

French, German, Italian and British equilibrium unemployment rates, 1968 – 2017

Unlike the USA, the German, Italian, British and French equilibrium unemployment rates all show fluctuations that reflect changes in their underlying economic circumstances and labour market reforms. The case of the British, the rise of the British disease and Thatchernomics. The case of German, its equilibrium unemployment rate rose after German unification and then fell after the labour market reforms of 2002 to 2005.

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Source: OECD Economic Outlook November 2015 Data extracted on 10 Nov 2015 07:07 UTC (GMT) from OECD.Stat.

More than 15% of unemployed Europeans haven’t had a job for more than four years

% of unemployment lasting longer than 12 months in Scandinavia since 1976

As I recall, most unemployed have been unemployed longer than 12 months in Sweden have to go on a labour market program. When they returned to unemployment after the program, the clock starts again. They are deemed to be freshly unemployed rather than adding to the previous spell with an interlude on a make work program. This makes Swedish long-term unemployment data rather unintelligible.

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Source: OECD StatExtract.

Finland was recovering from its worst depression since the 1930s and the early 1990s when its data on long-term unemployment started to be continuous. This makes Finnish unemployment data rather difficult to interpret. Norway’s data for the long-term unemployed goes up and down a bit too much to be trustworthy without a background policy narrative.

% of unemployment that is more than 12 months, USA, UK, Germany and France

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.

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Source: OECD StatExtract.

Italian unemployment incidence by duration since 1983

Unemployment of more than a year was slowly tapering down in Italy before the global financial crisis, but ever so slowly.

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Source: OECD StatExtract.

German unemployment incidence by duration since 1983

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.

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Source: OECD StatExtract.

New Zealand unemployment incidence by duration since 1986

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.

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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.

British unemployment incidence by duration since 1983

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

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Source: OECD StatExtract.

Australian unemployment incidence by duration since 1978

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.

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Source: OECD StatExtract.

French unemployment incidence by duration since 1983

Nothing really changes in France recently unemployment duration. Italian labour market is notorious for having very low inflows and outflows from employment and unemployment.

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Source: OECD StatExtract.

French, German, Italian, Irish and Spanish equilibrium unemployment rates, 1968 – 2016

Figure 1 shows large contrasts in time path of equilibrium unemployment rates. For example, French and Italian equilibrium unemployment rates haven’t changed much since about 1986.

Figure 1: equilibrium unemployment rates, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland and Spain, 1968 – 2016

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Source: OECD Economic Outlook June 2015 via OECD StatExtract..

Figure 1 also shows some fortuitous ups and downs in the German equilibrium unemployment rate. This estimate was available only from after German unification.

The equilibrium German unemployment rate rose from 6% to above 8% on the eve of the global financial crisis. Fortunately for Germany, major labour market reforms brought the equilibrium unemployment rate down as Germany moved into the global financial crisis.

The Spanish equilibrium unemployment rate had been terrible since about 1980, started to fall in the 1990s, then skyrocketed even before the onset of the global financial crisis – see figure 1.

There have been ups and downs in the Irish equilibrium unemployment rate – see figure 1. It was as high as 14% at the end of the Irish great depression of the 1970s and 1980s. The equilibrium Irish unemployment rate was 8% at the heyday of the Celtic tiger then slowly rose in the lead up to the global financial crisis.

Equilibrium unemployment rates in Canada, USA and UK, 1962 – 2016

Figure 1 suggests a lot more structural change in the Canadian and British labour market in the 1970s and 1980s.

Figure 1: equilibrium unemployment rates, Canada, USA and UK, 1962 – 2016

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Source: OECD Economic Outlook June 2015 via OECD StatExtract.

Nothing much at all seems to have happened to the equilibrium unemployment rate in the USA since the OECD first started calculating it. I doubt that so that will be subject of a future blog. Namely, the large changes in natural unemployment rates in the post-war period, largely to demographic changes such as the baby boom.

There were large cross-country differences in long-term unemployment duration both before and after the GFC

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