Europe's Unemployment Rate

[DanS]

Unemployment benefits last for such a short time anyway, although they are generous in amount compared to most countries. Depends on the state and where in the business cycle we are (an unwritten rule). You might be able to get away with minimal documentation.

[Dracon II]

I've always thought that the long term unemployed could be used to help maintain public works and help with civic projects and community service initiatives. Australia has a rudimentary program like this. It would remove some of the stigma associated with unemployment... and the idea that the unemployed sit around and do nothing but collect cheques... and it would do the community and the nation some good.

[Barinthus]

Originally posted by el freako
Do you mean to tell me that in the US you can claim unemployment benefit without actually searching for a job?

Not in California - I had to show that I'm making an effort.

[pchang]

As far as I can tell, all states reserve the right to require doumentation of job searching before they will grant unemployment benefits. However, they really only look at those making lower then average salaries. The difference between a high wage earner and the unemployment benefits (the maximum benefit per week is different from state to state but seems to average about $375/wk) is so great (for instance someone making $52,000 per year - $1000/wk) state officials just can't see them not looking for work.

[Bereta_Eder]

A good deal of it is structural unemployement that's why you'll hear many voices about the "need fopr a flexible market place". That basically means the trimming of social security, insurances to the workers, no layoff pay etc. So one can be excused for not wanting "a flexible work market". Now of course no matter what laws are in place the companies will do what they want and simply violate the laws with the tolerance of the state.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
nah, smart people too. unemployed people look at their paychecks, then look at prospective salaries. then they decide whether going to work is worth the extra whatever they get, or if they should stay unemployed looking for a higher paying job. the result is that they never get employed since they arnt willing to take a lower paying job then they had before.

What a bunch of silly libertarian nonsense. Unemployment is never good in the long run.

where did you get this from?

I've been unemployed.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

What a bunch of silly libertarian nonsense. Unemployment is never good in the long run.

you're right, so we should remove the incentives for being unemployed for the long run.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia


you're right, so we should remove the incentives for being unemployed for the long run.

What the hell are you talking about? No one wants to be unemployed, period.

[Evil Knevil]

Originally posted by DAVOUT


Sure, only 0.24% or 60000 persons of the active population is incarcerated in France (instead of 2% or 2.500.000 in the US), therefore the unemployment rate would decrease by 1.74%.
Unfortunately, this would require 440000 more criminals, a quantity that cannot be presently produced nor delivered by the criminal industry.

Heh, isn't it ironic that it was Foucault that originally suggested that there weren't too many criminals, just that there were too many arrests!

[Lawrence of Arabia]

here is NBER paper no 6111 by Abowd, Kramartz et al. They studied the effects of the minimum wage increases on youths in both France an the US.

"To check for an effect of the minimum wage, the authors tracked the employment of workers whose wage, just prior to the increase, was above the previous minimum wage but below the new higher minimum wage. For French men aged 25 to 30 who were in this marginal category, an increase of 1 percent in the minimum wage reduced their probability of keeping their job by 4.6 percent."

In France, the minimum wage has been rising in real terms in the last five decades. Between 1951 and 1994, the French minimum wage rose from 1.95 francs an hour to 6.92 francs an hour in 1994, both measured in 1970 francs, an increase of 255 percent. The French minimum wage in 1994, measured in 1997 dollars, was over $6.50 an hour.

from these conclusions, we can draw to implicit conclusions

1) unemployment and the minimum wage are strongly corrolated
2) the higher the minimum wage, the larger the effect of a 1% change in the minimum wage is.

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia


you're right, so we should remove the incentives for being unemployed for the long run.

LoA, you are out of touch of reality. There may be a hardcore few who really do want to avoid work and they should be clamped down upon, but are you honestly ignorant and stupid enough to believe that all people are willfully on the dole and it is totally their decision whether someone employs them? Get a grip, I have been there with experience and qualifications and it has still taken me a long time to find a job. If I didn't have that benefit I'd have been completely bankrupt! So before you start talking about something you don't have the vaguest notion about, find out something about it because you wouldn't believe how ignorant you look.

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
here is NBER paper no 6111 by Abowd, Kramartz et al. They studied the effects of the minimum wage increases on youths in both France an the US.

from these conclusions, we can draw to implicit conclusions

1) unemployment and the minimum wage are strongly corrolated
2) the higher the minimum wage, the larger the effect of a 1% change in the minimum wage is.

Youths? Those who have support of their parents and couldn't claim unemployment benefit anyway? Funnily enough minimum wage is going to entice more of them to work, it's a very specific section of the populace.

So by your logic companies should be made to pay a living wage, no?

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
LoA, you are out of touch of reality. There may be a hardcore few who really do want to avoid work and they should be clamped down upon, but are you honestly ignorant and stupid enough to believe that all people are willfully on the dole and it is totally their decision whether someone employs them?

It's not what he thinks.

He thinks that if you have employement benefits, you won't be threatened of immediate starvation, and thus you won't happily take the first crap job somebody generously offers.

If you had no unemployment benefits during that time (and no other form of financial support: family, charities...), you'd have accepted the first MacJob or janitor job that you'd have encountered.
Besides, if there was no minimal wage, employers could freely offer jobs with extremely low wages (the extreme low-wage market is mostly inexistent in the EU15), and thus you'd have much more choice among terrific jobs like shoe-cleaner.
As it is, because of the unemployment benefits and minimal wage, you would have never accepted a job that barely provided the survival minimum, and that was out of your branch. In this logic, it shows there's a problem with you (you're a lazy bum, that is even demanding when he should beg for any source of money, not that you're specifically to blame, because everybody who gets benefits does so), and there's a problem with the market (it can't offer survival-wage jobs, and as such, many people are unamployed instead of filling their natural place in the market).

I hope you understand that I find this ideology ignoble and dangerous. It is ignoble because I consider that, in our rich societies, any person who works should have acceptable standards of living (minimal wage argument), and that we can afford not to let our unemployed starve to death (benefits argument).
Besides, even from a libertarian standpoint, I think this idea goes completely against freedom: freedom is to choose your course of action without unbearable pressure and coercion. When the economic situation forces somebody to become an underpaid tomato-picker, he is not free, even though the coercion doesn't come from the big bad state (something the libbies seem to have an unhealthy fetish about). When you have the choice between accepting the first source of income you encounter, and starving, you have no valid choice. To say the contrary would be akin to saying "when the State forces you to do something or threatens to execute you if you don't, you have a valid choice"; it's false, and the libbies understand it when it comes to the State. They'd be greatly served to understand that it can come from non-State related situations as well.

[Provost Harrison]

Well put Spiffor...I wonder how much first hand experience Lawrence of Arabia has had of been in such a rut. I mean there is a visible minority who are genuinely problematic, will not work and try to get out of it any way they can. Then it would be the job of the state to try and catch these types out. However those who want to pull their weight, get a decent job that can pay for them a half-decent standard of living should get all the support available - the training and coaching, sources of jobs, etc, etc. I found that when I was actually looking for work that the Jobcentre in Hull would bend over backwards to be helpful - even though at my level there was very little they could actually do. They offered to furnish me with publications such as New Scientist, etc, so I could look through the job sections, help with covering expenses for travelling to job interviews where the company/agency would not fund it. And the benefit was meagre. Not unmanageably meagre, which is the whole point.

[Dracon II]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia

from these conclusions, we can draw to implicit conclusions

1) unemployment and the minimum wage are strongly corrolated
2) the higher the minimum wage, the larger the effect of a 1% change in the minimum wage is.

You're prepared to make generalizations of that gravity based on a study in one single country?