Comparing labor market performance: some stylized facts and key findings.
Brada, Josef C. ; Signorelli, Marcello
INTRODUCTION
In the half century before the current crisis, Europe, the US and
Japan experienced quite different labor market performance, with the
latter maintaining the best performance while the US outperformed Europe
over the last three decades due to robust job creation. The labor market
impact of the 2007-2008 financial crisis and the 2008-2009 Great
Recession has been remarkable in developed economies, and noteworthy for
its persistence in European countries, especially due to the 2010-3012
sovereign debt crises. Nevertheless, in Europe there are considerable
cross-country differences in labor market performance that have
persisted for some time, so that during the recent crisis each country
uniquely reflects its labor market institutions and initial pre-crisis
conditions.
Innovative empirical research, investigating key structural,
institutional and cyclical factors determining these differences among
developed economies and within EU countries can significantly contribute
to a better understanding of desirable economic and labor market
policies and reforms for creating a highly longed-for virtuous model of
growth, which would be able to create 'more and better jobs'.
(1) The first part of this paper provides some perspective on the
comparative
labor market performance of the US, Japan and the European
countries both for the past decades, but focusing on the crisis years.
In the second part, recent empirical studies and results, including the
papers published in this special issue, are presented in a wider context
in order to highlight some key features and determinants of the long-run
and recent performance of the developed economies and, especially, the
European countries. The final section briefly highlights some policy
implications.
COMPARATIVE EVIDENCE BASED ON SOME KEY LABOR MARKET PERFORMANCE
INDICATORS
In a global perspective, the analysis of labor market performance
is particularly complex and requires many indicators, all of which
differ in their importance according to the level of development of a
country. Thus, concepts like 'working poverty' and
'working vulnerability' are more important for less-developed
or emerging economies while the unemployment rate (UR), the youth
unemployment rate (YUR) and the employment rate (ER) are the key
indicators in developed countries. In Table 1 some comparative
statistics are presented for the main world regions, highlighting the
changes that occurred between 2007 and 2010, that is, during the recent
crisis.
This section briefly highlights the key comparative indicators for
Europe, the US and Japan, that is, the main developed economies that
have been much more deeply affected by the financial crisis and the
Great Recession than have other regions of the world. Starting from a
long-run perspective, that is, referring to the last five decades, it is
possible to summarize the following key facts, mainly based on the UR
(Table 2): (i) Japan persisted as the best performing economy,
notwithstanding a gradual increase in its UR; (ii) the US showed the
worst initial performance but significantly improved its relative
position in the following decades with remarkable net job creation,
especially relative to Western Europe; (iii) after the two oil shocks of
the 1970s, Europe entered a long phase of 'jobless growth'
with persistently high URs until the mid-1990s, when a phase of
'low growth with net job creation' started and continued until
the financial crisis and Great Recession.
Focusing on the most recent decades and on the impact of the crisis
in the European context, it should be noted that the last 'job
shock' hit both Western and Eastern European countries in a
powerful but different way, although this happened after almost two
decades of quite divergent trends in labor market performance. In fact,
the old EU countries, especially since the mid-1990s, experienced
significant net job creation accompanied by low productivity growth,
thus moving from an intensive model of growth toward an extensive model,
while new EU countries shifted, quite abruptly during the first years of
'transition recession', from an extensive model under central
planning with high male and female ERs and low and stagnant productivity
to an intensive model of growth, first losing jobs and gradually
increasing productivity. (2) So, for Eastern European countries, the job
shock after the latest crisis is the second one in less than a
generation. Considering the more recent crisis years, the total UR in
EU-27 increased from 7.1% in 2007 to 9.7% in 2010 and 2011, and it is
expected to persist at a similar level in 2012.
Above, we refer to Europe as a single area, only distinguishing
between West and East, but both long-run and recent evidence show that
UR differences between countries within both these groups are
significant. Focusing only on the current situation, the highest URs in
2011 are in Spain (21.7%), Greece (16.6%), Lithuania (15.4%), Ireland
(14.4%), Slovakia (13.4%) and Portugal (12.9%); the lowest rates are in
the Netherlands (4.4%), Austria (4.2%) and Germany (5.9%) (see Table 2).
Especially in some European countries like Italy, France, the UK
and Germany, the regional differences in URs are remarkable (Figure 1).
For example, in Italy, the regional URs ranged in 2010 from 14.7% in
Sicily to 2.7% in Bolzano. So, in some countries the national UR is the
result of very different regional rates. Moreover, the same total UR can
be the result of very different levels of short-term and long-term
unemployment. The long-term unemployment rate (LTUR) was persistently
much higher in Europe than in the US and Japan, but the recent crisis
reduced the difference between Europe and the US. The increase of LTUR
was from 2.6% in 2008 to 3.9% in 2010 in the EU-27, while it rose from
0.6% to 2.8% in the US. An increase in LTUR that recently occurred in
many countries shows that some part of cyclical unemployment is turning
into structural unemployment. Moreover, the differences in long-term
unemployment in Europe are also noteworthy: in 2010, the LTUR was
particularly high in Slovakia (9.2%), Latvia (8.4%), Estonia (7.7%),
Lithuania (7.4%), Spain (7.3%) and Ireland (6.7%), while the lowest
values were in Austria (1.1%), the Netherlands (1.2%), Denmark (1.4%)
and Sweden (1.5%). The increase over 2008-2010 was particularly steep
for Lithuania from 1.2% to 7.4%, Estonia from 1.7% to 7.7%, Latvia from
1.9% to 8.4%, Ireland from 1.7% to 6.7%, Spain from 2.0% to 7.3%,
Slovakia from 6.6% to 9.2% and Greece from 3.6% to 5.7%. Much better
changes, in the same period, occurred in Germany where LTUR declined
from 4.0% to 3.4%, and in the Netherlands and Austria where it increased
slightly from 1.1% to 1.2% and from 0.9% to 1.1%, respectively.
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
The same UR can be the result of very different UR compositions
according to age classes. YUR is a more dramatic and persistent problem
in Europe than in the US and, especially, in Japan. (3) In the 1990s,
the YUR in the EU-15 was around 20%, much higher than in the US and
Japan. In 2011, YUR was 21.4% in the EU-27, 17.3% in the US and 8.2% in
Japan. The ratio between youth and total UR is around 2 in Europe. The
YUR rates were also different among European countries. In 2011, the YUR
was particularly low in the Netherlands (7.6%) and Germany (8.5%), but
extremely high in Spain (46.4%), Slovakia (33.6%), Lithuania (32.9%),
Greece (32.8% in 2010) and Italy (27.8% in 2010). The average increase
in the period 2008-2010 was remarkable in several countries and some
increase was recorded in most European countries with the exception of
Germany.
The ER may be defined as the complement to the UR (divided by 100)
multiplied by the participation rate: (4)
ER = E x 100/[P.sub.20-64] = (LF - U/LF) x LF x 100/[P.sub.20-64] =
(1 UR/100) x PR (1)
So, the level of, and changes in, the ER are compatible with
different levels and dynamics of the UR. (5) For this reason, it is
useful for a better comparative approach over time and between
countries, to consider also the ER. In addition, the ER has become the
key labor market performance indicator of the European Council's
European Employment Strategy (EES) and of the Strategy for Europe 2020,
in which the EU-27 objective is to have 75% of the 20-64 population
employed by 2020.
It should be noted that, since the launch of the EES in 1997 and
until the impact of the financial crisis, the ER in Europe increased
appreciably, reducing the initially huge gap with respect the US and
Japan (Table 3). As for the crisis years 2008-2010, the ER decline was
-1.7% in the EU-27, from 70.3% to 68.6%, and -1.8% in the Eurozone from
70.2% to 68.4%. The ER reduction was much more pronounced (-4.8%) in the
US and started a year earlier, falling from 75.3 % in 2007 to 70.5 % in
2010, while a slight reduction occurred in Japan from 75.3% to 74.7%.
As with the UR, but with a bigger magnitude, large cross-country
differences in the ER exist in the European context. Considering the
last available year, 2010, particularly high ER levels occurred in
Sweden (78.7 %), the Netherlands (76.8%), Denmark (76.1%), Austria
(74.9%), Germany (74.9%), UK (73.6%); while the worst performing
countries were Hungary (60.4%), Italy (61.1%), Spain (62.5%), Romania
(63.3%) and Greece (64.0%). The biggest declines in ER, in percentage
points, starting from different levels in 2008 compared to 2010,
occurred in Latvia (-10.8%), Estonia (-10.3%), Ireland (7.2%), Spain
(-5.8%), Lithuania (-5.6%) and Bulgaria (-5.3%).
The cross-country differences in the ER are partly explained by the
differences in female ER and in the weight of irregular employment in
the shadow economy. As for the female ER, in Europe it has significantly
increased since the mid-1990s and it was not much affected by the
crisis. The impact of the recent crisis was stronger in the US, which
had a higher rate (65.6% in 2010) relative to the EU-27 (62.1%) and
Japan (63.7%). In Europe, the cross-country differences in female ER are
quite large, with the highest ER in Sweden (75.7 %), Denmark (73.1%),
Finland (71.5 %) and the Netherlands (70.8%) and the lowest rates in
Italy (49.5%), Greece (51.7%) and Spain (55.8%).
So-called irregular employment is difficult to estimate, but the
shadow economy can be considered a proxy. The negative correlation
between the latter and the regular ER (Figure 2) suggests that countries
with a lower ER have higher levels of irregular employment in the shadow
economy.
KEY DETERMINANTS OF LABOR MARKET PERFORMANCE: SOME RECENT EMPIRICAL
RESULTS
The investigation of the determinants of labor market performance
over time and across countries is one of the main research themes in
economics, but it is extremely complex due to the many economic,
institutional and social explanatory variables whose relative importance
can change over time and which interact with each other. As a result,
the existing theoretical and empirical literature regarding the
determinants of labor market performance is extensive (eg, Nickell et
al., 2005; Blanchard, 2006). Here, we review a small part of that
literature regarding developed countries with emphasis on some recent
empirical results.
Institutions, flexibilities and policies
A first important part of the literature investigates the role of
institutional variables, including employment protection legislation
(EPL), sometimes distinguishing between several components, labor taxes,
unemployment benefits, active labor market policies (ALMP), the
structure of collective bargaining, the degree of unionization, the
incidence of temporary and part-time contracts, liberalization of
product markets and many others. Different empirical studies, by
considering diverse country samples and/or periods and using various
econometric techniques and models, reached different conclusions
regarding the specific impact of some or all of the above institutional
variables (eg, OECD, 1994; Scarpetta, 1996; Nickell, 1997; Signorelli,
1997; Garcilazo and Spiezia, 2007; Bassanini and Duval, 2009; Feldmann,
2009; Arpaia and Curci, 2010). Others combined institutions and
sub-national level variables to explain regional (un)employment rate
differences and dynamics (eg, Perugini and Signorelli, 2007 and 2010;
Marelli et al., 2012a; Demidova and Signorelli, 2012). The lagged level
of unemployment is often added to control for a persistence effect.
Blanchard and Wolfers (2000) focused on the interaction between
institutional arrangements and economic shocks, while Belot and van Ours
(2004) investigated the evolution of unemployment over time by
interacting institutions and changes in institutions. Fiori et al.
(2007) analyzed the role of product market reforms and Feldmann (2010)
considered an 'index of the economic freedom of the world'.
While the negative impact on labor market performance due to the tax
wedge on labor is largely verified by many studies (eg, OECD, 2006), as
for the role of EPL and the different types of labor market flexibility,
the results are mixed and the debate is still ongoing. (6) In this
issue, Bernal-Verdugo et al. (2012) analyze a panel of 97 countries for
the period 1985-2008, controlling for possible endogeneity and reverse
causality from unemployment to labor market institutions and find that
improvements in labor market flexibility significantly reduce total,
youth and long-term unemployment; in particular, hiring and firing
regulations and hiring costs are found to have the strongest effect.
[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]
Eichhorst and Feil (2010) consider the complex role of labor market
institutions during a negative shock by incorporating in their analysis
different types of labor market flexibility and also by focusing on
interactions between institutions, shocks and policies. In particular,
they distinguish: (i) external numerical flexibility (dependent on EPL,
the benefit system affecting labor supply, labor taxes); (ii) internal
numerical flexibility (working time adjustments); (iii) external
functional flexibility (occupational mobility, influenced by ALMP); (iv)
internal functional flexibility (changing organization of production);
and (v) wage flexibility. The literature on internal flexibility is
still scarce, but the recent higher diffusion in several European
countries of working time adjustments for mitigating the negative
effects of the current crisis on employment levels, often favored by
policy interventions, suggest the need for new studies. In this issue,
Arico and Stein (2012) analyze, for the very recent crisis years, the
divergent effectiveness in Germany and Italy of short-time work schemes
due to differences in the institutional set-up within which they operate
and in the whole set of labor market policies adopted by each country.
Also in this issue, Calavrezo and Lodin (2012) study the main
characteristics of firms and employees involved in short-time working
arrangements in France during the period 2007-2010 by using jointly
firm-level data sets and the national labor force survey.
Another line of research, normally part of the debate on the role
of institutions, regards the assessment of active and passive labor
policies. (7) The positive role played by effective ALMP in producing
better labor market performance is largely confirmed by several studies
(eg, Destefanis and Mastromatteo, 2010), while the debate is still open
on the impact of passive labor policies (eg, Howell and Rehm, 2009),
especially as regards the design of the unemployment benefit. In this
issue, Corsini (2012) examines how unemployment insurance schemes and
liquidity constraints affect reemployment probabilities in the cases of
Finland, Italy and Poland, and investigates whether these schemes,
through employment services and search requirements, can offset the
perverse effect of benefits on unemployment duration.
Structural and cyclical factors
In the long-run perspective, the ability of an economic area to
have more and better jobs largely depends on the intensity and
characteristics of economic growth and development and on the pattern of
structural change, interacting with changes in the global division of
labor. In this respect, sectoral and aggregate productivity dynamics
(eg, Lilien, 1982; Kruger, 2008), together with demographic and
migration trends (eg, Pissarides and McMaster, 1990) have a strong
impact on the economic decline or growth of different regions, with a
significant effect on labor market performance. In addition, during the
past several decades, the change in the world division of labor has been
significantly affected by the diffusion of new information technologies
and by the globalization process, especially the expansion of
international trade that favored the economic dynamism of the two
giants, China and India, (eg, Holscher et al., 2010; Marelli and
Signorelli, 2011) and of other emerging countries. As for developed
economies, a large literature investigated the conditions favoring a
'virtuous' model of growth in which both employment and
productivity, and consequently wages, have a high or at least adequate
dynamic over time (eg, Marelli and Signorelli, 2010b). It should be
noted that the current sovereign debt crisis in the Eurozone is
occurring in the context of a longer-term comparative economic decline
of the European continent, which has been unable to create a virtuous
model of growth for several decades.
As for a short-run perspective, the literature largely debated the
role of macroeconomic cyclical conditions in affecting labor market
performance, mainly starting from different specifications of
'Okun's law', that is, focusing on the relationship
between GDP growth and changes in the UR (eg, Lee, 2000; Solow, 2000).
More recently, IMF (2010) examined the role of institutions and policies
in explaining changes in Okun's law across countries and over time,
while Bartolucci et al. (2011) estimated an extended Okun's model
able to detect the additional impact of financial crises on unemployment
beyond the effect occurring through GDP changes. This additional impact
is ascribed to the increase in systemic uncertainty. Considering that
the short-run evolution of key variables like innovation, employment and
productivity can have significant effects in the medium-long run, new
studies investigating the cyclical dynamics are particularly important,
especially in crisis times. In this issue, Lucchese and Pianta (2012)
explore the way in which economic cycles influence the relationship
between innovation and employment in the manufacturing industries of
several European countries, and they find that, in upswings, employment
change is affected by new products, expanding exports and wage growth,
while during downswings, new processes contribute to restructuring and
job losses. Thus, unemployment and productivity growth can interact in
different ways over the business cycle, and, in this issue, Marelli et
al. (2012b) investigate the short-term joint dynamics of productivity
and employment during economic down cycles in EU economies over the past
20 years, highlighting the peculiarities of the latest recession.
Segmentations and mismatches
In some theoretical models, labor is considered homogeneous, but a
large empirical literature highlights the existence of labor market
segments. Female labor market participation and segregation were
investigated by, for example, Bettio (1988) and Signorelli et al.
(2012), while a growing literature focuses on the determinants of the
higher YUR relative to the other age classes. For example, Caroleo and
Pastore (2007) stress the key role of the 'youth experience
gap' in reducing the employability of young workers; in fact young
people, despite a generally higher education, often lack the other two
components of human capital: generic and job-specific work experience.
In other words, educated young people need to acquire firm-specific
knowledge through working activities for human capital created through
formal education to become productive (Carmeci and Mauro, 2003). Also,
the role of institutional variables, including school-to-work transition
(STWT) processes, has been extensively analyzed (eg, Quintini and
Manfredi, 2009; Ryan, 2001). However, studies investigating the impact
of the crisis on youth labor market performance are still scarce
(Choudhry et al., 2012a, b), especially as regards the risk of creating
a 'lost generation' due to the current crisis (Scarpetta et
al., 2010). In this issue, O'Higgins (2012) analyzes the effects of
the Great Recession on young people's labor market experiences in
the European countries during the period 2008-2011, taking into account
the role of different labor market institutions.
The existence of several mismatches between demand and supply in
the labor market is partly related to segmentation and has been largely
investigated in the theoretical and empirical literature (eg,
Padoa-Schioppa Kostoris, 1991; Shimer, 2007). The simultaneous existence
of job vacancies and unemployment, the so-called Beveridge curve,
depends on the economic cycle (eg, Shimer, 2005), but the magnitude of
unemployment and vacancies is remarkable in several European countries.
As for educational and skill mismatches (eg, Allen and van der Velden,
2001), the relationship between educational system features, labor
market characteristics and STWT institutions has been extensively
analyzed, with studies on the timing and nature of university-to-work
transitions (eg, Schomburg and Teichler, 2011; Sciulli and Signorelli,
2011). However, the literature focusing, in a comparative perspective,
on the size and consequences of over-education is still quite limited.
In this issue, Croce and Ghignoni (2012) analyze the incidence of
over-education of university graduates for a panel of European
countries, and they show that cyclical conditions matter and that
over-education operates as a short-term adjustment mechanism.
FINAL REMARKS
The negative impact of the 2007-2008 financial crisis and the
2008-2009 Great Recession on labor market performance has been
undeniable in many developed countries, and its effects will persist in
the Eurozone countries that have been hit by the 2010-2012 sovereign
debt crises or by the risk of contagion and that have consequently
adopted restrictive fiscal policies, and thus face the prospect of a
long recession or stagnation.
While monetary policy, both at the national level and through
international coordination, has been more or less successful so far in
mitigating some of the effects of the crisis on aggregate economic
performance, the same cannot be said of fiscal policy. In some
countries, the existence of structural deficits and high levels of debt
before the crisis precluded the use of expansionary fiscal policy.
Within the EU, this limitation on the use of fiscal stimulus was
exacerbated by the very small fiscal role of the 'central
government' (the EU) and the overwhelming importance of
national-level taxes and expenditures. (8)
Thus Europe, and especially the Eurozone, continues to face high
systemic uncertainty. Further steps toward institutional and policy
integration, such as the creation of the European Stability Mechanism
and the implementation of the 'Fiscal Compact', are necessary,
but may not be sufficient, to reduce the risk of further contagion from
the sovereign debt crisis and to increase the currently feeble GDP and
employment growth prospects. (9) That said, passive labor market
policies to sustain jobs and labor incomes in the EU have, as several
papers in this issue show, been effective in a number of countries and
they enjoy greater social acceptance than do similar, though more
limited, policies in the US.
The main conclusions of the papers presented in this issue can be
briefly summarized as follows: (i) external flexibility, internal
flexibility and labor policies have to be carefully designed looking at
best practice, but taking into account the country-specific structural
and institutional framework; (ii) short run complex dynamics of
innovation, employment and productivity suggest policies for favoring a
model of growth in which innovation is one of the key factors leading to
employment and productivity dynamism; (iii) young people are the most
vulnerable segment in the labor market in many European countries, and
evidence suggests the need for targeted policies involving the design of
the educational system and the STWT institutions in order to shorten the
time for transition-to-work and to improve the education-to-job
matching, thus increasing workers' job satisfaction and overall
productivity.
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(1) Since the early 1990s, that is, after almost two decades of
'Eurosclerosis' with persistently low-net job creation in
Europe, European institutions promoted several documents and policy
proposals for reforming the labor market including the Delors White
Paper (European Commission, 1994); European Employment Strategy (1997);
Lisbon Strategy (2000); and the Strategy for 'Europe 2020'.
(2) See Marelli and Signorelli (2010a).
(3) A higher youth unemployment rate is frequently associated with
a lower participation rate. Thus, a higher share of young people are
'left behind' and are often trapped in a condition of
'neither in employment nor in education or training' (the
so-called NEET group).
(4) Where: LF = Labour force = employment (E) + unemployment (U);
UR = Unemployment rate = unemploymentxl00/labour force; ER-Employment
rate = employmentxl00/population 20-64 ([P.sub.20-64]); PR =
Participation rate-labour forcexl00/population 20-64.
(5) Starting from Equation 1, the unemployment rate may be defined
as UR = (1 - ER/PR) x 100
(6) Naturally, all studies found a lower volatility over time of
employment in high EPL countries.
(7) In addition to the different kinds of labor policies, it should
be recalled that all the other macro and micro policies directly or
indirectly affect the labor market performance. In a macroeconomic
perspective, in order to define effective policies, it is useful to
determine if the existing unemployment is mainly 'Keynesian',
due to lack of aggregate demand, or 'classical', due to high
wages (Malinvaud, 1977), or 'structural' (Jackman and Roper,
1987).
(8) Here the comparison between the EU and the US is telling. In
the EU, countries remain responsible for most government activities,
including national defense, foreign affairs, infrastructure, science and
technology and so on and national public expenditure is around the 50%
of GDP in EU countries, but EU countries are increasingly facing strict
budget constraints and public debt sustainability conditions set by the
market. Spending by the EU itself, on the other hand, is miniscule, near
1% of EU GDP. In the US, spending by the Federal government and by the
states are about equal, and the central government has sole
responsibility for many activities such as national defense, many
infrastructure projects and so on, and thus it is better able to run
deficits in the pursuit of a fiscal stimulus without facing the same
market resistance to its expanded borrowing that individual states would
face. Obviously, many other institutional differences exist between the
US and the EU, for example, regarding the different potential and
effective actions of the Federal Reserve relative to the European
Central Bank.
(9) In particular, the 'Fiscal Compact', with more
effective European constraints on national public finance, can be a sort
of pre-condition favoring the necessary well-designed institutional
innovation introducing two new European financial instruments,
Eurobonds: (i) 'project Eurobonds' for up to 6% of European
GDP because today the EU budget is only 1% of the EU-27 GDP. This
reflects the idea of J. Delors for realizing large-scale European
investments in infrastructure, R&D and human capital, and thus
favoring the necessary innovation, economic growth and net job creation;
(ii) 'stability Eurobonds', transforming a part of the
national debts in the Eurozone, for example, up to 60% of national GDP,
into 'Eurozone guaranteed bonds', favoring an overall
reduction in interest and in the risk of speculative attacks.
JOSEF C. BRADA [1] & MARCELLO SIGNORELLI [2]
[1] Department of Economics, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
85287-3806, USA. E-mail: josef.brada@asu.edu
[2] Department of Economics, Finance and Statistics, University of
Perugia, via A. Pascoli, 20, 06123 Perugia, Italy.
E-mail: signorel@unipg.it
Table 1: Labor market performance indicators in a global perspective
Unemployment Youth
rate (%) unemployment
rate (%)
2007 2010 2007 2010
World 5.5 6.1 11.7 12.8
Developed economies and European Union 5.8 8.8 12.5 18.1
Central and South Eastern Europe 8.4 9.5 17.6 19.5
East Asia 3.8 4.1 8.0 8.8
South East Asia and the Pacific 5.5 4.8 14.9 13.6
South Asia 3.8 3.9 8.6 10.2
Latin America and the Caribbean 7.0 7.2 14.1 14.6
Middle East 10.3 9.9 24.9 25.4
North Africa 10.1 9.6 23.8 23.0
Sub-Saharan Africa 8.1 8.2 12.8 12.8
Employment Working
rate (%) (a) poverty
(%) (b)
2007 2010 2007 2010
World 61.2 60.2 16.7 15.1
Developed economies and European Union 57.1 55.0 -- --
Central and South Eastern Europe 53.5 53.5 1.8 1.4
East Asia 71.3 70.4 10.9 8.1
South East Asia and the Pacific 66.2 66.7 14.5 11.4
South Asia 57.2 54.9 37.8 36.8
Latin America and the Caribbean 60.9 61.4 4.2 3.5
Middle East 42.6 42.7 1.6 1.1
North Africa 43.8 44.2 8.0 6.5
Sub-Saharan Africa 64.4 64.4 43.4 39.1
Vulnerable
employment
(%) (c)
2007 2010
World 51.1 49.6
Developed economies and European Union 9.9 10.0
Central and South Eastern Europe 20.6 20.9
East Asia 54.8 49.6
South East Asia and the Pacific 62.3 62.3
South Asia 80.0 78.4
Latin America and the Caribbean 32.3 31.9
Middle East 31.0 29.8
North Africa 40.5 37.7
Sub-Saharan Africa 77.6 76.9
(a) Employment rate calculate on overall population.
(b) Working poverty is defined as employment with an income below
US$1.25.
(c) Vulnerable employment defined as the self-employed without
employees and unpaid family workers.
Source: ILO (2012)
Table 2: Unemployment rates: European countries, US and Japan
(decade averages and recent years)
1960-1970 1971-1980 1981-1990 1991-2000
EU-27 -- -- -- --
EU-15 2.2 4.0 8.5 9.2
Euro area (17) -- -- -- --
United States 4.8 6.4 7.1 5.6
Japan 1.3 1.8 2.5 3.3
Austria 2.1 1.4 2.9 3.9
Belgium 1.9 4.6 9.5 8.5
Bulgaria -- -- -- --
Cyprus -- -- -- --
Czech Republic -- -- -- --
Denmark 1.1 3.6 6.9 6.6
Estonia -- -- -- --
Finland 2.2 4.0 4.6 12.5
France 1.8 4.1 8.7 10.6
Germany ** 0.6 2.2 6.0 7.8
Greece 5.0 2.2 6.4 9.5
Hungary -- -- -- --
Ireland 5.4 7.7 14.7 11.1
Italy 4.9 6.1 8.6 10.4
Latvia -- -- -- 12.7
Lithuania -- -- -- 7.5
Luxembourg 0.0 0.6 2.5 2.5
Malta -- -- -- 5.7
Netherlands 0.9 3.7 7.2 5.1
Poland -- -- --
Portugal 2.4 5.1 7.3 5.7
Romania -- -- -- --
Slovakia -- -- -- --
Slovenia -- -- -- --
Spain 2.4 5.4 15.6 15.7
Sweden 1.7 2.1 2.6 7.6
United Kingdom 1.7 3.8 9.5 7.9
2001-2010 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
EU-27 8.6 8.2 7.2 7.1 9.0 9.7 9.7
EU-15 8.0 7.8 7.1 7.2 9.2 9.6 9.5
Euro area (17) 8.7 8.5 7.6 7.6 9.6 10.1 10.2
United States 6.1 4.6 4.6 5.8 9.3 9.6 8.9
Japan 4.7 4.1 3.9 4.0 5.1 5.1 4.6
Austria 4.4 4.8 4.4 3.8 4.8 4.4 4.2 *
Belgium 7.8 8.3 7.5 7.0 7.9 8.3 7.2
Bulgaria 11.2 9.0 6.9 5.6 6.8 10.2 11.1
Cyprus 4.6 4.6 4.0 3.6 5.3 6.2 7.8
Czech Republic 7.0 7.2 5.3 4.4 6.7 7.3 6.8
Denmark 4.9 3.9 3.8 3.3 6.0 7.4 7.6
Estonia 9.7 5.9 4.7 5.5 13.8 16.9 12.5
Finland 8.2 7.7 6.9 6.4 6.2 8.4 7.8
France 8.9 9.2 8.4 7.8 9.5 9.8 9.7
Germany ** 8.8 10.3 8.7 7.5 7.8 7.1 5.9
Greece 9.8 8.9 8.3 7.7 9.5 12.6 16.6
Hungary 7.5 7.5 7.4 7.8 10.0 11.2 10.9
Ireland 6.3 4.5 4.6 6.3 11.9 13.7 14.4
Italy 7.8 6.8 6.1 6.7 7.8 8.4 8.1 *
Latvia 11.1 6.8 6.0 7.5 17.1 18.7 15.0 *
Lithuania 10.9 5.6 4.3 5.8 13.7 17.8 15.4
Luxembourg 4.1 4.6 4.2 4.9 5.1 4.6 4.8
Malta 7.1 7.1 6.4 5.9 7.0 6.9 6.4
Netherlands 4.0 4.4 3.6 3.1 3.7 4.5 4.4
Poland 14.3 13.9 9.6 7.1 8.2 9.6 9.7
Portugal 8.2 7.8 8.1 7.7 9.6 12.0 12.9
Romania 7.1 7.3 6.4 5.8 6.9 7.3 7.4
Slovakia 15.1 13.4 11.1 9.5 12.0 14.4 13.4
Slovenia 6.1 6.0 4.9 4.4 5.9 7.3 8.1
Spain 11.9 8.5 8.3 11.3 18.0 20.1 21.7
Sweden 7.0 7.1 6.1 6.2 8.3 8.4 7.5
United Kingdom 5.6 5.4 5.3 5.6 7.6 7.8 8.1
2012 *
EU-27 9.8
EU-15 9.7
Euro area (17) 10.1
United States 9.0
Japan 4.8
Austria 4.5
Belgium 7.7
Bulgaria 11.3
Cyprus 7.5
Czech Republic 7.0
Denmark 7.3
Estonia 11.2
Finland 7.7
France 10.0
Germany ** 5.8
Greece 18.4
Hungary 11.0
Ireland 14.3
Italy 8.2
Latvia 13.5
Lithuania 13.3
Luxembourg 4.8
Malta 6.8
Netherlands 4.7
Poland 9.2
Portugal 13.6
Romania 7.8
Slovakia 13.2
Slovenia 8.4
Spain 20.9
Sweden 7.4
United Kingdom 8.6
Note: * European Commission, Autumn 2011, Forecasts;
** 1960-1991=West Germany.
Source: Eurostat online database
(http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/statistics/
search_database)
Table 3: Total employment rates (selected and recent years)
1992 1994 1997 2000 2003 2006 2007 2008
EU-27 -- -- 65.1 66.6 67.0 69.0 69.9 70.3
EU-15 65.1 63.8 64.7 67.3 68.4 70.2 71.0 71.3
Euroarea-17 -- -- 62.9 65.5 66.8 68.9 69.8 70.2
United States 73.6 74.7 76.5 76.9 74.5 75.3 75.3 74.5
Japan 76.2 75.3 75.5 74 73.2 74.5 75.3 75.3
Belgium 61.3 60.7 62.1 65.8 64.7 66.5 67.7 68
Bulgaria -- -- -- 55.3 58 65.1 68.4 70.7
Czech Republic -- -- -- 71 70.7 71.2 72 72.4
Denmark 75.7 74.1 76.4 78 77.3 79.4 79.2 79.8
Germany 68.9 67.5 66.9 68.8 68.4 71.1 72.9 74
Estonia -- -- -- 67.4 70 75.8 76.8 77
Ireland 57 59.2 63.6 70.4 70.6 73.4 73.8 72.3
Greece 58.7 59.4 60.5 61.9 63.6 65.7 66 66.5
Spain 53.6 50.8 54.2 60.7 64 68.7 69.5 68.3
France 65.6 64.6 65.2 67.8 69.7 69.3 69.8 70.4
Italy -- 55.5 55.1 57.4 60 62.5 62.8 63
Cyprus -- -- -- 72.3 75.4 75.8 76.8 76.5
Latvia -- -- -- 63.5 68.9 73.5 75.2 75.8
Lithuania -- -- -- 65.6 68.9 71.6 72.9 72
Luxembourg 64.8 63.7 64.4 67.4 67.2 69.1 69.6 68.8
Hungary 58 61.2 62.4 62.6 62.6 61.9
Malta -- -- -- 57.2 57.8 57.6 58.5 59.1
Netherlands 66.4 66.5 70.9 74.3 75.2 76.3 77.8 78.9
Austria -- 70.6 70.6 71.4 72 73.2 74.4 75.1
Poland -- -- 65.3 61 57.1 60.1 62.7 65
Portugal 71.1 69.6 70.9 73.5 72.9 72.7 72.6 73.1
Romania -- -- 71.7 69.1 63.7 64.8 64.4 64.4
Slovenia -- -- 68 68.5 68.1 71.5 72.4 73
Slovakia -- -- -- 63.5 64.8 66 67.2 68.8
Finland 69.7 65.1 67.9 71.6 72.2 73.9 74.8 75.8
Sweden 81.1 75.5 74.6 77.7 77.9 78.8 80.1 80.4
United Kingdom 70.5 70.6 72.6 74 74.7 75.2 75.2 75.2
Norway -- -- -- 80.3 78.4 79.5 80.9 81.8
Target
2009 2010 2020
EU-27 69.0 68.6 75
EU-15 69.9 69.6 --
Euroarea-17 68.8 68.4 --
United States 71.3 70.5 --
Japan 74.5 74.7 --
Belgium 67.1 67.6 73.2
Bulgaria 68.8 65.4 76
Czech Republic 70.9 70.4 75
Denmark 77.8 76.1 80
Germany 74.2 74.9 77
Estonia 69.9 66.7 76
Ireland 66.7 64.9 69-71
Greece 65.8 64 70
Spain 63.7 62.5 74
France 69.4 69.1 75
Italy 61.7 61.1 67-69
Cyprus 75.7 75.4 75-77
Latvia 67.1 65 73
Lithuania 67.2 64.4 72.8
Luxembourg 70.4 70.7 73
Hungary 60.5 60.4 75
Malta 58.8 60.1 62.9
Netherlands 78.8 76.8 80
Austria 74.7 74.9 77-78
Poland 64.9 64.6 71
Portugal 71.2 70.5 75
Romania 63.5 63.3 70
Slovenia 71.9 70.3 75
Slovakia 66.4 64.6 72
Finland 73.5 73 78
Sweden 78.3 78.7 well over 80
United Kingdom 73.9 73.6 No target
Norway 80.6 79.6 --
Source: Eurostat online database
(http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/statistics/
search_database)
