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The Unemployment Rate in Every Region of Europe
- Luc 8y agoMeh blog post. Here's the interactive chart at Eurostat: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/RCI/#?vis=nuts2.labourmarket&lang=en http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/RCI/#?vis=nuts2.labourmar...
- yiyus 8y agoThis is so much better. Thank you very much!
- netrus 8y agoGerman 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.
- k__ 8y agoWhen I saw the chart I thought: "Well, Germany doesn't look too bad, funny that the people in Eastern Germany always complain."
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoI think it could do with an extra dimension for eastern Germany, e.g. wages or relative wealth; having low unemployment is good, but if there's a big wage / wealth discrepancy between east and west there's still room for improvement.
- nraynaud 8y agoThat’s the whole debate, by forcing people to take one euro jobs, you lower the unemployment stats while increasing your poverty stats.
- ptaipale 8y agoI would expect that the discrepancy that matters - wages vs. cost of living - has much bigger difference if you go from East Germany to Poland, Czech Republic or Slovakia, rather than in comparison to West Germany. I.e. purchasing power drops much more when you go east, compared to going west.
- cleansy 8y agoI am from Brandenburg originally and am very surprised that Berlins unemployment rate is higher than Brandenburg's?! I checked statista[1][2] and indeed, it is. When I grew up it was around 18%. 1: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/2519/umfrage/entwicklung-der-arbeitslosenquote-in-berlin-seit-1999/ https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/2519/umfrage/... 2: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/762452/umfrage/arbeitslosenquote-in-brandenburg/ https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/762452/umfrag...
- dx034 8y agoPeople moving away from the countryside to cities could be a big factor. That leaves rural areas with a lot of older folks (that don't count as unemployed) while jobseekers are in bigger cities. Why should you be unemployed in rural Brandenburg when you could as well move to Berlin where there's a higher chance for a job? That could also explain why the rate in Northeastern Germany has decreased that much, both areas are mostly rural.
- Zenst 8y agoCurious 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.
- matthewmacleod 8y agoI think you’ve got that back to front!
- teekert 8y agoYeah, this is really very strange indeed to me as well.
- draugadrotten 8y agoThe 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/Glossary:Unemployment 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.
- crispyporkbites 8y agoNo - to be on the dole you need to be actively searching for a job in most jurisdictions in Europe. E.g. in the UK you need to go down to the job center every week and prove you're searching for a job in order to claim unemployment benefit. It's literally called jobseeker's allowance to reflect that. Also what is a "government job market program"? Are you referring to a government employing people en masse to inflate the employment rate? You generally need taxes to do that so it's probably a legitimate approach.
- DanBC 8y agoJSA is being replaced by universal credit. People on UC need to spend 35 hours per week on their job search, and they need to be able to demonstrate this. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/universal-credit-and-your-claimant-commitment-quick-guide/universal-credit-and-your-claimant-commitment https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/universal-credit-... > You should think of jobseeking as a full-time job. You will be expected to look or prepare for work for 35 hours a week, depending on your circumstances. This requirement is robustly enforced. I mention this because there are some people in the UK who think that unemployed people in the UK can get away with not doing anything.
- vincvinc 8y agoThis link (Same site, different settings) might be more directly understandable: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/RCI/#?vis=nuts2.labourmarket&lang=en http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/RCI/#?vis=nuts2.labourmar...
- heavenlyhash 8y agoThat's - one picture - a whole lot of non-sequitur.
- ekianjo 8y agoI 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.
- yiyus 8y ago> it makes regions with total different population densities appear on the same level It shows unemployment RATES, so population density does not matter.
- Agebor 8y agoIt does, as the regions with different population sizes should have different overall importance.
- anc84 8y agoNo, why should a person living in place A have a different expectance of employment than a person in place B?
- draugadrotten 8y agoBecause, reality.
- barrkel 8y agoFirstly, the problem is a geographical display that will visually over-weight sparsely populated areas. Secondly, per your question, it's perfectly natural to expect economic activity to increase with population density. Increased density of people means that travel costs (both time and money) are far lower, and thus the profitability bar for niche goods and services is much lower. That means there's a lot more demand that can be profitably satisfied given the population and their skills, and thus they can be better employed. In other words, there are reasons cities increase the expectation of employment: they lower transaction costs and increase economies of scale.
- nkkollaw 8y agoI'd like to add that actual figures for Italy are hard to estimate correctly. Many, many people work under the table, very often pretending that they're still out of work to keep getting the unemployment check.
- crispyporkbites 8y agoIs that anecdotal or fact? How many is many, many people?
- nkkollaw 8y agoWell, by "under the table" I mean that those workers are unknown to the government, so I don't think there is a way to know for sure. The government's estimates are at ~15%. From my experience, most workers in agriculture and food & beverages work under the table. It's a very complicated subject--which I can talk about if you're interested--but I don't know if you can really blame them. Taxes in Italy are almost 50%. For years I've paid 45% in taxes and 1200/yr. for my accountant. In Poland, I only pay 19% for taxes and 40/mo. for my accountant, and services to citizens and public safety are about 1000 times better than Italy. It just feels wrong to pay taxes in Italy: you don't have any money left, and whenever you need something from the government it's a nightmare and done so badly that you feel you're in a third-world country.
- jahvo 8y agoSame in Spain. People are obviously working. Otherwise there would be riots in the streets already, haha.
- tluyben2 8y agoYep, I have many friends who are officially unemployed; all are working. Quite hard as well. The system in Spain does not encourage paying taxes, starting companies or hiring people legally. It is quite bad but I do not see it fixed soon.
- 8y ago
- tda 8y agoI 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
- aclimatt 8y agoJust overlay a map of median temperatures and you'll have some interesting insight.
- lmm 8y agoI'm not sure how much a simple median would tell you. My instinct is that how much the climate varies over the year might be as or more important than the point average.
- dmerfield 8y agoThe map of Protestants and Catholics is the one that leaps out at me as aligning quite closely: Religion: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Catholicism,_Protestantism,_Orthodoxy_and_Islam_in_Europe.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Catholicism,_... Unemployment: http://thesoundingline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/EU-and-Turkey-unemployment-rates.jpg http://thesoundingline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/EU-and...
- taysic 8y agoWhat's the insight? Historically those areas in the southern Mediterranean have been harder to defend / had more diversity / immigration / general variables. Is this what you're referring to?
- fabianmg 8y agoEducation?. Really?. "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=20130412132724421 http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=2013041...
- dasanman 8y agoStrange choice of color scheme
- crispyporkbites 8y agoIn 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.
- jankotek 8y agoBig part of Europe is missing (Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Kavkaz...). But for some reason it includes asian part of Turkey, islands, part of south america... ;-)
- maephisto 8y agoThe 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.
- roel_v 8y agoGP most likely knows and is just passive-aggressively complaining about the conflation of 'Europe' and 'EU' in the title.
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoIs it still? It's a human rights nightmare and I don't think the EU should have anything to do with Turkey while Erdogan is still in power.
- solarkraft 8y agoIt's not really a question anymore for the next few years (or decades). Official status is just a political tool by now and even then this classification may lag behind.
- rsynnott 8y agoIt's still a candidate. It's moving backwards rather than forwards on its acceptance criteria, and realistically won't be joining anytime soon, but it's still a candidate.
- oblio 8y agoIt's EU data.
- 8y ago
- barrkel 8y ago> where the unemployment rate is below 5.8%, a level generally considered to indicate a healthy labor market 5.8% is a the cut-off for a healthy labour market, apparently. Meanwhile https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-s-unemployment-rate-drops-to-a-record-low-of-58-a3250981.html https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-s-unemployment... describes London's unemployment rate reaching 5.8% as a record low!
- matthewmacleod 8y agoThe two things aren’t mutually exclusive, and in any case you’re probably not comparing figures that are calculated in the same way.
- barrkel 8y agoI know; but the chart's source data almost certainly doesn't use figures that are calculated in the same way either. At best, they'll have been manually corrected for estimated biases. (Will they have correctly accounted for how many people get shifted off into disability payments and other health-related benefits that are used to massage unemployment figures? I have my doubts.) My point was more that a suspiciously precise number of 5.8% was chosen as a magical barometer of goodness, justifying a switch in hue, not just brightness or saturation. The magic number of 5.8% doesn't seem to have support elsewhere.
- solatic 8y agoNot included in the chart: Israeli unemployment at 3.6% http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-unemployment-in-israel-falls-to-new-low-1001233871 http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-unemployment-in-israel-fa...
- jahvo 8y agoAlso not included in the chart: Japanese unemployment at 2.5%
- rsynnott 8y agoIsrael isn't an EU, EEA or EFTA member, or candidate for EU membership.
- solatic 8y agoCan people really still point at Turkey and call it a serious candidate for EU membership? There is a serious case for including Israeli figures in this kind of pan-regional not-exclusively-EU analysis. Israel is far closer, culturally, to Europe than geographically closer neighbors (e.g. Morocco, Tunisia) and is increasingly part of European academic, sporting, and artistic interests (most recently thinking of Eurocrypt 2018, which was in Tel Aviv this week, and this year's Giro D'Italia, which is starting in Israel this weekend). There are strong historical reasons why Israel will never apply to be a member of the EU or to adopt the Euro - but a perspective is to think of Israel as strongly Eurosceptic. Can anyone really look at Eurosceptic parties on the Continent and say that, what, the EU defines what it means to be European? That Hungary is no longer culturally European or that it dropped off the Continent because Viktor Orbán got elected Prime Minister?
- rsynnott 8y agoAs things stand, currently, Turkey's candidacy isn't going to be going forward anytime soon. But that's not the point. It is an official candidate, so Eurostat keeps an eye on it. If Israel became a candidate, Eurostat would do ditto (though for practical reasons Israel also won't be a candidate anytime soon). Incidentally, Turkey is also in a customs union with the EU, the only non-EU/EEA/EFTA country of any significant size to be in one. This gives Eurostat added incentive to keep an eye on it. Israel is a member of or involved in various non-EU pan-European things (EBU, Council of Europe etc), but Eurostat is an EU thing, not a European thing.
- mishkovski 8y agoThe unemployment rate in Republic of Macedonia is like that for almost three decades. More than 25%.
- biztos 8y agoTwo 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.
- csomar 8y agoWhile 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.
- fnordsensei 8y agoWhy 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.
- k__ 8y agoI'm more of an UBI guy. The whole minimum-wage stuff didn't seem like a good idea to me. But since its conception I only read good things about it.
- ihsw2 8y agoThe crux is that welfare payouts need to be wholly discontinued in order for UBI to make sense -- the intention is that UBI replaces a unmaintainable patchwork with a universal safety net. Having both doesn't make economic sense and only causes confusion and financial pain.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
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- BenoitEssiambre 8y agoThere 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.
- jdietrich 8y ago>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. It's hard to see what more they could do.
- donttrack 8y agoExplains why I keep getting job offers from Norway and Southern Germany..
- esbranson 8y agoFor all interested, here is the "harmonized" OECD unemployment rate. It uses a standard definition to compare the OECD countries. https://www.oecd.org/employment/harmonised-unemployment-rates-oecd-updated-april-2018.htm https://www.oecd.org/employment/harmonised-unemployment-rate... https://data.oecd.org/unemp/harmonised-unemployment-rate-hur.htm https://data.oecd.org/unemp/harmonised-unemployment-rate-hur...
- megaman22 8y agoWith the exception of Bavaria, this almost looks like a map of historically Protestant vs Catholic regions. Also, what is so different about Macedonia compared to the surrounding regions that it has such lower unemployment rates?