About that jobless rate
Bookworm on Feb 06 2009 at 8:54 am | Filed under: Uncategorized
A quick post before I head off to my own job. A top story today is the fact that the U.S. jobless rate has climbed to a high 7.6%. I don’t quarrel with the fact that that’s bad news. Joblessness is not only a sign of an unhealthy economy, it’s also a recipe for a dissatisfied citizenry. But just to put it in perspective (and to warn that things will be worse if Obama and Pelosi have their way), that’s still comparable or even low compared to the ordinary (non-recession) jobless rate in some major socialized economies:
Germany: 7.9% – 10.8%, depending who’s giving the numbers
France: 7.8%
Italy: 6.8%
England, whose official unemployment number in the World Fact book is 5.5%, turns out to have been lying all along (how very Soviet of it). In any event, that’s all history because, with the recession the UK is apparently in jobless freefall. (I’ll find a link for that later or would appreciate if any of you have a link to the latest jobs news out of the UK, which I saw last week.)
Related posts:
- About that unemployment rate *UPDATED*
- This is why Hastings is a second rate law school *UPDATED*
- What is the “ideal” tax rate?
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BBC says 6.1% at the end of November
“The number of people claiming jobseeker’s allowance increased 77,900 to 1.16 million in December, according to the Office for National Statistics.”
“The unemployment rate was 6.1% for the three months to the end of November, compared with 5.2% in the same period of 2007.“
If only we trusted the BBC….