The definition of "unemployment" is important here. it
An unemployed person is defined by Eurostat, according to the guidelines of the International Labour Organization, as:
> someone aged 15 to 74 (in Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Iceland, Norway: 16 to 74 years);
> without work during the reference week;
> available to start work within the next two weeks (or has already found a job to start within the next three months);
> actively having sought employment at some time during the last four weeks.
> The unemployment rate is the number of people unemployed as a percentage of the labour force.
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...
This means that any person which is currently not earning their keep, but not actively searching a job (because they are on the dole) will not be unemployed in these statistics. It also means that any person which is not earning their keep, but unable to take a job in the next two weeks because the are in a government job market program, will not be listed as unemployed in these statistics.
Curious how they are using colourisation in the opposite way. They have the low levels of unemployment as orange with the darker shades as the lowest and use blue for higher levels of unemployment, again the darker shades to indicate the highest employment.
So the concerning area's show as blue and the ok area's show as panic inducing Orange instinctively. Most odd.
German perspective: Wow, what a dramatic shift in Eastern Germany! Maybe it is just a general upwards trend in Germany with little room for improvement in Southern Germany, but it might also be the beginning of the end of Eastern Germany's under performance. I will certainly investigate further.
Two days ago I was watching a German TV show in which the panelists discussed the low-wage-job boom: apparently unemployment is very low (5.6%) but an unhealthy portion of the jobs people are working are low-wage and/or exploitative of labor, and thus not really contributing to long-term social stability.
If too many people are working minimum wage and the minimum wage isn't realistic then sooner or later you have a big problem paying for social services.
(In Germany it's 8.84 EUR per hour but has only existed for a few years and I gather there's a lot of noncompliance.)
So, interesting map, but only telling part of the story.
While I agree it is still a much bette situation than in Italy or Spain. Germany is relatively cheaper than France and has better infrastructure. Having a low paying job gets your feet somewhere.
Not having any employability in Spain or Italy is going to be a tough problem.
Why pay? A much more reasonable solution is to pretend that subtle systemic connections don't exist between all agents in society, and just let them suffer and die.
Sure, long term, that might lead to even bigger problems, but on the other hand, long-term is not NOW.
Careful not to fall into the mental trap of comparing with an imaginary situation. No one has ever achieved 100% employment without involving gunpoint; you have to decide between the real world alternatives. Namely: is it better to have more people on social assistance, or more people on very low wage? (Of course, here in Germany it's mixed - you get lots of social assistance based on your income level. Plus, "better" is a tricky word to pin down...)
It's certainly too early to declare "mission accomplished", but people actually going to work and actually earning their own money, rather than being clients in a welfare system, is tremendously important for long-term social stability.
true, but things like wages and social standards are other statistics.
Additionaly to the mentioned "low-wage-job" boom you have to mention part-time employment.
Which does count as employment but doesn't result in the usual 40h+/week.
There are groups of people that, through no fault of their own, are less productive. Maybe they are young and inexperienced just out of school, maybe they are older and have lower stamina, maybe they are rooted in a region where it is costlier and more difficult for businesses to operate, maybe they are a visible minority and are made less efficient by other people’s discriminatory treatment, maybe they have a difficult family situation affecting them at work, maybe they only have experience in industries where margins are thin because of foreign competition or maybe they are innately just not good at the type of activities that are profitable in today’s world.
Central banks affect job creating investment through interest rates. It may seem like small interest rate changes wouldn’t make a big difference for anyone once the effect propagates and is diluted across the whole economy. However, looking at it through the lens of cost of capital where businesses decide to do projects or not based on the expected profitability relative to borrowing costs, it is easy to see that the effect is highly unequal. This type of calculation implies a threshold, a cutoff where activities under a certain level of profitability are completely stopped. The fact that interest rates act as a threshold with regards to investment entails shutting down all lower margin activities, those that tend to be manned by people that are naturally disadvantaged.
This means that when central banks tighten too much, some workers may be afflicted moderately by a more difficult labor market but whole segments of the less productive and more vulnerable, may be completely cutoff from having a job.
The investment in equipment and buildings necessary to perform their work disappears. Major projects get cancelled in isolated and disadvantaged rural areas. Entry level positions that would be manned by the less experienced disappear. Jobs that require less education also go away.
People who, in good times are already paid less and have little capacity to bear a fall in revenue, don’t just bear a proportionate drop but a complete fall to zero with often only meager government welfare to fall back on. On top of the hit to dignity, it atrophies their skills and makes them further disadvantaged and vulnerable. In the next cycle, they’re likely to again be the first to be cutoff.
It’s difficult to overstate the utter cruelty of monetary mismanagement.
>This means that when central banks tighten too much, some workers may be afflicted moderately by a more difficult labor market but whole segments of the less productive and more vulnerable, may be completely cutoff from having a job.
Europe has been running rock-bottom interest rates since the 2008 crash. The ECB are charging 0% on MRO lending and offering -0.4% on deposits. The BoE have just increased rates from 0.25% to 0.5% in late 2017 due to rising inflation. Both banks have spent most of the last decade flooding the markets with money through QE.
What we're seeing in this map I think is not just your everyday failure of monetarism (trying to control and balance out complex economies with only a single variable which is also an extremely heavy, blunt tool - interest rates). I think the problem is deeper, being a combination of a) misguided treaties based on bad economics (some would call it 'neoliberalism') like the so-called "Stability and Growth Pact" (which actually restricts member state's ability to deal with financial crises) and the way the ECB has been set up to not make fiscal transfers between states (or the equivalent, directly buying bonds from member states), and b) the madness of fixed exchange rates between the member states, by having a common currency without a federal budget.
It mostly comes down to the Euro - what we see with countries with flexible exchange rates is that their economies don't have to internally devalue with changes in inflation, terms of trade, etc. because the exchange rates changes and just balances it out. But in Europe with the common currency, compared to Germany's economy the Euro is weak, meaning their exports are more competitive, and compared to the weaker economies the Euro is strong, which means imports are cheap but exports uncompetitive. This is self-propagating, so Germany has been able to massively increase its trade surplus at the cost of the weaker countries' increasing trade deficits and increasing unemployment, because they are internally devaluing to compensate.
There are two ways to solve this - either do what the US does for its states with a federal taxing and spending Government (meaning fiscal transfers from the stronger economies to the weaker ones to balance this out), or abandoning the Euro and having individual currencies with flexible exchange rates. Business as usual will see Spain, Portugal, Italy and eventually France in the same boat as Greece...
I really dislike this kind of visualization since it makes regions with total different population densities appear on the same level. besides, the definition of who is actually unemployed varies greatly throughout Europe since governments have been hacking such statuses to make figures look better than they are.
> I really dislike this kind of visualization since it makes regions with total different population densities appear on the same level.
This visualization is using European NUTS-2 regions, which have roughly equal population. Each region is between 800k and 3 million people. While perfect scaling is not practically possible, it is much better than geographical regions.
Given that here in southern Italy they're usually paid 1/5 of their nominal wage, I'm not surprised. A few companies I've worked with would have folded if they had to pay most of their employees what's written on their salaries. Even while working for bigger european/US companies there's always a tacit expectation that you're gonna work twice the time it's actually written in your contract. And I'm not talking just about low-level positions, I've met junior automotive engineers whose actual wage wouldn't go north of 10€/hr.
In case anyone is wondering what unemployed means in this context:
> An unemployed person is defined by Eurostat, according to the guidelines of the International Labour Organization, as someone aged 15 to 74 without work during the reference week who is available to start work within the next two weeks and who has actively sought employment at some time during the last four weeks. The unemployment rate is the number of people unemployed as a percentage of the labour force.
I wonder how many plausible alternative captions we can come up with for this map? A few takes:
* Corruption level (blue is less)
* Income per capita (blue is more)
* Education level (blue is better)
* Price of a beer (blue is more)
* etc
"Regarding Europe’s other large countries, the proportions were 47.1% for Britain, 31.9% in Germany (which retains a strong tradition of technical education), 43.6% in France, 40.1% in Spain and 39.1% in Poland."
Big part of Europe is missing (Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Kavkaz...). But for some reason it includes asian part of Turkey, islands, part of south america... ;-)
The South America / islands and included because they are territories belonging to a EU country (France, Spain, Portugal). Turkey is in there because it's a candidate country.
[+] [-] Luc|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] draugadrotten|8 years ago|reply
An unemployed person is defined by Eurostat, according to the guidelines of the International Labour Organization, as:
> someone aged 15 to 74 (in Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Iceland, Norway: 16 to 74 years); > without work during the reference week; > available to start work within the next two weeks (or has already found a job to start within the next three months); > actively having sought employment at some time during the last four weeks. > The unemployment rate is the number of people unemployed as a percentage of the labour force. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...
This means that any person which is currently not earning their keep, but not actively searching a job (because they are on the dole) will not be unemployed in these statistics. It also means that any person which is not earning their keep, but unable to take a job in the next two weeks because the are in a government job market program, will not be listed as unemployed in these statistics.
Lies, damn lies and statistics.
[+] [-] Zenst|8 years ago|reply
So the concerning area's show as blue and the ok area's show as panic inducing Orange instinctively. Most odd.
[+] [-] netrus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yiyus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vincvinc|8 years ago|reply
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/RCI/#?vis=nuts2.labourmar...
[+] [-] biztos|8 years ago|reply
If too many people are working minimum wage and the minimum wage isn't realistic then sooner or later you have a big problem paying for social services.
(In Germany it's 8.84 EUR per hour but has only existed for a few years and I gather there's a lot of noncompliance.)
So, interesting map, but only telling part of the story.
[+] [-] csomar|8 years ago|reply
Not having any employability in Spain or Italy is going to be a tough problem.
[+] [-] k__|8 years ago|reply
But since its conception I only read good things about it.
[+] [-] fnordsensei|8 years ago|reply
Sure, long term, that might lead to even bigger problems, but on the other hand, long-term is not NOW.
[+] [-] ohthehugemanate|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mseebach|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sqidyyy|8 years ago|reply
Additionaly to the mentioned "low-wage-job" boom you have to mention part-time employment. Which does count as employment but doesn't result in the usual 40h+/week.
[+] [-] thatfrenchguy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BenoitEssiambre|8 years ago|reply
Central banks affect job creating investment through interest rates. It may seem like small interest rate changes wouldn’t make a big difference for anyone once the effect propagates and is diluted across the whole economy. However, looking at it through the lens of cost of capital where businesses decide to do projects or not based on the expected profitability relative to borrowing costs, it is easy to see that the effect is highly unequal. This type of calculation implies a threshold, a cutoff where activities under a certain level of profitability are completely stopped. The fact that interest rates act as a threshold with regards to investment entails shutting down all lower margin activities, those that tend to be manned by people that are naturally disadvantaged.
This means that when central banks tighten too much, some workers may be afflicted moderately by a more difficult labor market but whole segments of the less productive and more vulnerable, may be completely cutoff from having a job.
The investment in equipment and buildings necessary to perform their work disappears. Major projects get cancelled in isolated and disadvantaged rural areas. Entry level positions that would be manned by the less experienced disappear. Jobs that require less education also go away.
People who, in good times are already paid less and have little capacity to bear a fall in revenue, don’t just bear a proportionate drop but a complete fall to zero with often only meager government welfare to fall back on. On top of the hit to dignity, it atrophies their skills and makes them further disadvantaged and vulnerable. In the next cycle, they’re likely to again be the first to be cutoff.
It’s difficult to overstate the utter cruelty of monetary mismanagement.
[+] [-] jdietrich|8 years ago|reply
Europe has been running rock-bottom interest rates since the 2008 crash. The ECB are charging 0% on MRO lending and offering -0.4% on deposits. The BoE have just increased rates from 0.25% to 0.5% in late 2017 due to rising inflation. Both banks have spent most of the last decade flooding the markets with money through QE.
It's hard to see what more they could do.
[+] [-] stephen_g|8 years ago|reply
It mostly comes down to the Euro - what we see with countries with flexible exchange rates is that their economies don't have to internally devalue with changes in inflation, terms of trade, etc. because the exchange rates changes and just balances it out. But in Europe with the common currency, compared to Germany's economy the Euro is weak, meaning their exports are more competitive, and compared to the weaker economies the Euro is strong, which means imports are cheap but exports uncompetitive. This is self-propagating, so Germany has been able to massively increase its trade surplus at the cost of the weaker countries' increasing trade deficits and increasing unemployment, because they are internally devaluing to compensate.
There are two ways to solve this - either do what the US does for its states with a federal taxing and spending Government (meaning fiscal transfers from the stronger economies to the weaker ones to balance this out), or abandoning the Euro and having individual currencies with flexible exchange rates. Business as usual will see Spain, Portugal, Italy and eventually France in the same boat as Greece...
[+] [-] ekianjo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ProblemFactory|8 years ago|reply
This visualization is using European NUTS-2 regions, which have roughly equal population. Each region is between 800k and 3 million people. While perfect scaling is not practically possible, it is much better than geographical regions.
[+] [-] yiyus|8 years ago|reply
It shows unemployment RATES, so population density does not matter.
[+] [-] nkkollaw|8 years ago|reply
Many, many people work under the table, very often pretending that they're still out of work to keep getting the unemployment check.
[+] [-] noisymemories|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crispyporkbites|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jahvo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] megaman22|8 years ago|reply
Also, what is so different about Macedonia compared to the surrounding regions that it has such lower unemployment rates?
[+] [-] esbranson|8 years ago|reply
https://www.oecd.org/employment/harmonised-unemployment-rate...
https://data.oecd.org/unemp/harmonised-unemployment-rate-hur...
[+] [-] crispyporkbites|8 years ago|reply
> An unemployed person is defined by Eurostat, according to the guidelines of the International Labour Organization, as someone aged 15 to 74 without work during the reference week who is available to start work within the next two weeks and who has actively sought employment at some time during the last four weeks. The unemployment rate is the number of people unemployed as a percentage of the labour force.
[+] [-] tda|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aclimatt|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fabianmg|8 years ago|reply
"Regarding Europe’s other large countries, the proportions were 47.1% for Britain, 31.9% in Germany (which retains a strong tradition of technical education), 43.6% in France, 40.1% in Spain and 39.1% in Poland."
http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=2013041...
[+] [-] jankotek|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maephisto|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oblio|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mishkovski|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dasanman|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pc86|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] donttrack|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heavenlyhash|8 years ago|reply
- one picture
- a whole lot of non-sequitur.
[+] [-] ObeyTheGuts|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] barrkel|8 years ago|reply
5.8% is a the cut-off for a healthy labour market, apparently.
Meanwhile https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-s-unemployment... describes London's unemployment rate reaching 5.8% as a record low!
[+] [-] matthewmacleod|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] solatic|8 years ago|reply
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-unemployment-in-israel-fa...
[+] [-] rsynnott|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jahvo|8 years ago|reply