US unemployment figures do not capture all of the unemployed. A more comparable figure to the German number might be 8% if you count people who have given up on

US unemployment figures do not capture all of the unemployed. A more comparable figure to the German number might be 8% if you count people who have given up on job searching and don't get counted in the official statistics. To make a full comparison you might also want to look at the number of people working part time jobs that really want to be working full time. Our laws encourage employers to split some kinds of work among part time employees rather than hire full time employees. The economy still has just as many unemployed man hours, but they don't show up in the statistics because each individual is employed. (I don't know if German law encourages this.) Germany is in a bad spot for unemployment, but suggesting it is more than twice the US with those statistics is not accurate.