unemployment figures

[idun]

I have friends who believe that only the british government 'plays' with these figures and have had said to me that the french and spannish ones they have seen in the recent past are 'right'.

My argument is that all governments 'play' with the figures as I'm sure that France does, and surely Spain does too.

Spain's being 23% led to the argument that as it was so high, it had to be a true figure of 'all' people who were unemployed in Spain.

Any comments.

[Mr Ice-ni]

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Disraeli or S.L. Clemens

Govts lie about everything else so why not unemployed numbers.

John

[breizh]

Nail and Head=Hit.

Because all Govns lie, there is an internationally recognised standard issued by the ILO which all OECD countries use. Eurostat produce the figures for the EU.

Random samples are interviewed in the various countries. The basic question is "would you work if you could?". It aims to cover all types of economic inactivity, not just unemployment.

If you read carefully the UK figures. They quote a "claimant count" which is the number claiming unemployment benefits, and an "unemployment figure" which is the ILO (real) figure. Pretty well everyone ignores the "claimant count"...................for obvious reasons.

UK Unemployment figure is around 2.7million, Claimant Count around 1.5million.

Spain uses the ILO standard, historically the figures have been high due to the very low participation of married women in the workplace. I would beleive the ES figure to be correct.

France seems to like "chomage", and sticks to Claimants, take that as you wish[Www] I've seen (academic) reports that suggests the true figure is 4.5million, rather than the 2.9million reported.

If you look at the "Employment Rates" which are difficult to fiddle, you can see the differences between countries.......................http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table.do?tab=table&language=en&pcode=tsiem010&tableSelection=1&footnotes=yes&labeling=labels&plugin=1

You can see the UK/Scandanavia/Northern Europe around 70%. The Gallic/Latin/Southern Europe around 60%, or lower.

Done this to death at work.

[idun]

I seem to remember the british government fessing up to 2.3 million unemployed recently, which ofcourse could soar as many come off their invalidity benefit.

Thanks for that web site, very interesting.